Message-Streams Oriented Hybrid Slot Allocation Protocol for Tactical Data Link System

This paper presents a message-streams oriented hybrid slot allocation protocol (MOHSAP) for tactical data link system that combines a collision-free static slot allocation algorithm and a contention based dynamic slot allocation algorithm while retaining the advantages of each. For fixed message streams (FMS), this contains the key information generally in tactical data link system, MOHSAP assigns permanent slots by static slot allocation algorithm off-line to guarantee quality of service (QoS). For random message streams (RMS), MOHSAP uses its dynamic allocation mechanism to reuse bandwidth that would otherwise be wasted by a static slot allocation mechanism. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed protocol can combine the advantages of two fundamentally different design philosophies without suffering from their drawbacks and meet the requirements of the QoS in tactical data link system.