Performance analysis of CDMA random access systems with heavy-tailed packet length distribution

This paper analyzes the performance of unslotted CDMA random access schemes with heavy-tailed packet length distribution. Most of the previous work cover the analysis of the system with Poisson process and for infinite population and infinite buffer size where the results mainly depend on the mean values of the traffic. In this paper we remove these assumptions and analyze the behavior of the system for the more general and realistic case of finite population, finite buffers and variable packet length. The emphasis is placed on the study of the effect of the heavy-tailed packet length on the system characteristics. Specifically, we show via analysis and simulation that even when the mean packet length is small the system can have bottlenecks due to the packet length characteristics, and therefore dynamic adaptation and control of the system is required.