Position-based broadcast TDMA scheduling for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) with advantaged nodes

Space-time division multiple access (STDMA) is a position-based broadcast TDMA scheduling protocol for mobile ad-hoc networks, and is the MANET adaptation of the cellular TDMA with spatial re-use bandwidth allocation paradigm that is encountered in cellular TDMA networks. In STDMA, space is divided into virtual geographic cells (also referred to as ´space slots´, or ´grids´) that are grouped into periodically repeating virtual frames (space frames) in order to facilitate spatial reuse, and time slots are assigned to space slots. Each node is equipped with a means of determining its instantaneous location (i.e., GPS), and therefore always knows the identification of the space slot (grid) that contains it, and consequently the time slot that is assigned to it. Advantaged nodes (nodes with very large transmission/reception range), due to their increased number of neighbors, can significantly reduce the amount of spatial-reuse that can take place in a MANET, and therefore are allocated a separate timeslot, which does not follow the spatial-reuse rules. In this paper, we show that a) STDMA is a topology-transparent broadcast scheduling protocol that guarantees a unique transmitter within a 2-hop neighborhood, b) it can be easily coupled with advantaged nodes, and c) that the maximum number of time slots between successive transmissions by a given node (produced by STDMA) is linearly bounded by the maximum network degree, therefore exponentially outperforming currently proposed topology-transparent TDMA scheduling protocols