The support to ATM services in wireless mobile networks is discussed. A reference model for the network architecture is outlined and a quantitative analysis is presented, in which the efficiency of resource management mechanisms and quality of service support in a wireless ATM network is compared to that of a circuit switched network. The analysis involves mobile users belonging to two different service classes (real-time and non-real-time traffic). This study has been carried out by considering the ATM layer to receive an ideal service from the underlying radio-channel access layer. The results show that ATM resource management improves the blocking performance of the network whenever a consistent portion of the total offered traffic is represented by variable bit rate applications; the QoS is largely improved for non-real-time variable bit rate traffic and is slightly worsened for real-time constant bit rate traffic.

It is well known that a multistage banyan network, which is a single-path blocking structure, becomes rearrangeable nonblocking in a circuit-switching environment if the number of its stages is increased so as to obtain a Benes network. Banyan networks, provided with a shared queue in each switching element, have often been proposed as the core of an interconnection network for an ATM packet switching environment. In this scenario, if the classical interstage backpressure protocols are used, adding stages to a banyan network can even degrade the banyan network performance, in spite of the multipath capability given by the additional stages. A class of new simple interstage protocols is here defined to operate in the added stages of the banyan network so that a sort of sharing of the queueing capability in each added stage is accomplished. Large improvements in the traffic performance of these extended banyan networks are obtained, especially in the region of offered loads providing a low packet loss probability.

It is well known that a multistage banyan network, which is a single-path blocking structure, becomes rearrangeable non-blocking in a circuit switching environment if the number of its stages is increased so as to obtain a Benes network. Banyan networks, provided with a shared queue in each switching element, have often been proposed as the core of an interconnection network for an ATM packet switching environment. In this scenario, if the classical interstage back-pressure protocols are used, adding stages to a banyan network can even degrade the banyan network performance, in spite of the multipath capability given by the additional stages. A class of new simple interstage protocols is defined to operate in the added stages of the banyan network so that a sort of sharing of the queueing capability in each added stage is accomplished. Large improvements in the traffic performance of these extended banyan networks are obtained, especially in the region of offered loads providing a low packet loss probability.>