Apparatus and method for controlling operational states of medium access control layer in a broadband wireless access communication system

Disclosed is a method for controlling an operational state of a medium access control layer in a broadband wireless access communication system. The method includes the steps of performing an uplink access of a contention-based scheme to an access point using resources required to perform the uplink access according to the contention-based scheme when data to be transmitted in an access state is detected, and being allocated resources required to perform an uplink access of a contention-frec scheme from the access point in a case of failing in the uplink access of the contention-based scheme; and performing a state transition from the access state into the traffic state in a case of having been allocated the resource required for the contention-free scheme, and performing the uplink access of the contention-free scheme to the access point using the allocated resource in the traffic state.