Design and Simulation of Dynamic TDMA Protocol Based on Tactical Internet

Abstract

Current TDMA (time division multiple access) protocols based on the dynamic time slot allocation scheme involve some information delays because the source nodes can not send messages in time. These delays are caused by booking the time slots of the next frame in the current transmission. A feasible approach to reduce the delays is to allocate time slots in time. This paper presents a new TDMA protocol that can assign time slots according to the request of traffic load at the beginning of the frame by exchanging the control information. We demonstrate the improvements achieved by our scheme via building the hierarchical Tactical Internet models that employ the new TDMA protocol and via discussing energy consumption, throughput and End-to-End delay. Comparing our scheme with those of related works shows that our protocol achieves good network performance and feasibility in the tactical Internet environment. In addition, the detailed design of the proposed protocol and the specific realization of the whole work by using OPNET Modeler Software are also displayed for the freshman as a tutorial.