An Evolutionary-TDMA Scheduling Protocol (E-TDMA) for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

TLDR: Simulations have shown that the performance of the E-TDMA protocol is close to that of centralized algorithms, while being insensitive to network size in terms of scheduling quality and scheduling overhead.

Abstract: A new single channel, time division multiple access (TDMA) scheduling protocol, termed “EvolutionaryTDMA”, is presented for mobile ad hoc networks. The protocol allows nodes in an ad hoc network to reserve conflict-free TDMA slots for transmission to their neighbors. Two topology-dependent schedules are generated and maintained by the protocol: a broadcast schedule suitable for network control traffic and a mixed schedule which combines unicast, multicast and broadcast transmissions for user data traffic. The schedules are frequently updated in an evolutionary manner to maintain conflict-free transmissions. The protocol executes across the entire network simultaneously in a fully-distributed and parallel fashion. Traffic prioritization and Quality of Service (QoS) can be supported. Simulations have shown that the performance of the E-TDMA protocol is close to that of centralized algorithms, while being insensitive to network size in terms of scheduling quality and scheduling overhead. It is a scalable protocol suitable for very large networks, and networks of varying size.