Evaluation of slot allocation strategies for TDMA protocols in packet radio networks

Time-division multiple-access (TDMA) protocols provide packet radio networks with useful features that facilitate efficient communications. Many different algorithms have been proposed to maximize the reuse of the bandwidth and simultaneously minimize the TDMA frame length. The resulting slot assignments of these algorithms can be grouped into two general strategies for assigning transmissions rights to nodes: node and link allocation. The performance of each allocation strategy is evaluated using a detailed simulation. The results indicate that in all cases, for both single-destination packets and broadcast packets, node allocation offers better delay performance than link allocations