Packet-switched wireless data networks built upon IP (Internet Protocol)-based infrastructure are being envisioned to provide ubiquitous Internet access to mobile users. Supporting packet-data services along with the cellular voice services in an integrated networking framework gives rise to new network infrastructure and protocol design issues that are to be resolved to facilitate the introduction of the next generation wireless IP networks.

This thesis addresses several protocol design issues in the area of wireless packet data networking, namely, retransmission control design for multichannel protocols, radio link level protocol for dynamic rate and error control, inter-layer protocol dependency, radio link-layer and transport-layer protocol fairness and radio link-level dynamic bandwidth allocation. A retransmission control policy for a multichannel S-ALOHA (slotted ALOHA) protocol in a high speed wireless data network is proposed and analyzed. A sub-optimal dynamic rate adaptation procedure is proposed for uplink data transmission in WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access)-based wireless IP networks. The performance of this scheme is analyzed using a novel ‘mean-sense’ approach for interference calculation in cellular WCDMA environment. The impact of macrodiversity packet combining on transport-protocol throughput performance is analyzed under different link-level retransmission control policies. A unified TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access)-based centralized bandwidth management mechanism is proposed as a link-level solution for providing service fairness among competing users for uplink data transmission in a wireless IP network. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) performance is evaluated under different transport-level packet scheduling policies in a correlated fading environment and a time frame-based scheduling policy is proposed to provide service fairness among mobile users in the case of downlink transmission. A set of centralized burst-level bandwidth allocation policies are investigated as a means of service integration with QoS (Quality of Service) provisioning in the wireless IP air interface.