Simulation study of AAL type 2

Cellular network applications are growing drastically and this requires a fast and efficient transport method between the base station and the mobile switching center. One possible solution is to use ATM links. The low data rate and small-sized packets in the typical cellular applications imply that significant amount of link bandwidth would be wasted, if this small sized packet is carried by one ATM cell. For efficient operation for such cellular and low bit rate applications, a new type of ATM Adaptation Layer, AAL type 2, has been proposed. In this paper, the principles of AAL type 2 are briefly described along with the introduction of other alternatives which have formed the basis for this new AAL. The result from the simulation to study the performance of the AAL type 2 is discussed from the point of a packet delay and ATM cell use efficiency. Due to the variable sizes of packets in this application, the fairness issue in serving variable sized packets is also discussed along with the effect of the fair queueing algorithm implemented at AAL type 2. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.