Delay sensitive TDMA slot assignment in ad hoc wireless networks

Time slot assignments in a TDMA ad hoc wireless network (AWN) is either centrally coordinated by a root node or distributed among all the nodes in the network. In the centralized TDMA network, the root node uses the global knowledge of the network to assign slots, but becomes more challenging in case of distributed network, as each node is expected to assign a slot for itself without conflicting other nodes' slot selection. There is plenty of literature on how slots are assigned in a centralized TDMA network but only a few on distributed. Quality of Service (QoS) is critically important in AWNs and a good slot assignment scheme prioritizes its QoS metrics during the process of slot assignments. Real-time communications require end-to-end delay and jitter within acceptable limits for better overall QoS. This paper proposes a delay sensitive approach to TDMA Slot assignment problem in distributed AWNs. The proposed approach does a balancing act between end-to-end delay and spatial reuse. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach obtains quality results in terms of call acceptance rate, end-to-end delay and spatial reusability.