A bandwidth reservation multiple access scheme(BRMA) is proposed to resolve contention and assignbandwidth among multiple users trying to gain access toa common channel such as in mobile users contending for resources in an ATM-based cellular networkor a wireless local area network (LAN) with shortpropagation delays. The protocol is best suited tosupport variable-bit-rate (VBR) traffic that exhibits high temporal fluctuations. Each mobile user isconnected end-to-end to another user over virtualchannels via the base station that is connected to thewired ATM B-ISDN network. The channel capacity is modeled as a time frame with a fixed duration.Each frame starts with minislots, to resolve contentionand reserve bandwidth, followed by data-transmissionslots. Every contending user places a request for data slots in one of the minislots. If therequest is granted by the base station through adownlink broadcast channel, the user then startstransmission in the assigned slot(s). The number ofassigned slots varies according to the required qualityof service (QoS), such as delay and packet lossprobability. A speech activity detector is utilized inorder to indicate the talkspurts to avoid wastingbandwidth. Due to its asynchronous nature, BRMA is ratherinsensitive to the burstiness of the traffic. Since theassignment of the minislots is deterministic, therequest channels are contention-free and the data channels are collision-free. Hence, in spite ofthe overhead (minislots) in each frame, BRMA provideshigher throughput than Packet Reservation MultipleAccess (PRMA) for the same QoS, especially for high-speed systems. A better delay performance is alsoachieved for data traffic compared to Slotted Alohareservation-type protocol PRMA. In addition, BRMAperforms better in terms of bandwidth efficiency thanthe conventional TDMA or the Dynamic TDMA, wherespeech activity detectors are very difficult toimplement.