Spatial TDMA: A Collision-Free Multihop Channel Access Protocol

In this paper we define a broadcast channel access protocol called spatial TDMA, which is designed specifically to operate in a multihop packet radio environment where the location of the nodes of the network is assumed to be fixed. The defined protocol assigns transmission rights to nodes in the network in a local TDMA fashion and is collisionfree. Methods for determining slot allocations are developed, and an approximate solution is given for determining the assignment of capacities for the links of the network that minimizes the average delay of messages in the system.