Making transmission schedules immune to topology changes in multi-hop packet radio networks

Transmissions scheduling is a key design problem in packet radio networks, relevant to TDMA and CDMA systems. A large number of topology-dependent scheduling algorithms are available, in which changes of topology inevitably require recomputation of transmission schedules. The need for constant adaptation of schedules to mobile topologies entails significant, sometime insurmountable, problems. These are the protocol overhead due to schedule recomputation, performance penalty due to suspension of transmissions during schedule reorganization, exchange of control message and new schedule broadcast. Furthermore, if topology changes faster than the rate at which new schedules can be recomputed and distributed, the network can suffer a catastrophic failure. The authors propose a robust scheduling protocol which is unique in providing a topology transparent solution to scheduled access in multi-hop mobile radio networks. The proposed solution adds the main advantages of random access protocols to scheduled access. Similarly to random access it is robust in the presence of mobile nodes. Unlike random access, however, it does not suffer from inherent instability, and performance deterioration due to packet collisions. Unlike current scheduled access protocols, the transmission schedules of the proposed solution are independent of topology changes, and channel access is inherently fair and traffic adaptive