Delay and queue size analysis of TDMA with general traffic

In TDMA (time division multiple access), stations transmit their messages on a shared communication channel using their dedicated time slots. All the previous delay analyses of TDMA have been based on the assumption that either the interarrival times of the traffic is exponential or the message lengths are geometrically distributed. This paper presents a generalized model in which the above assumptions are relaxed. This model allows us to compute the exact performance characteristics in closed forms for the mean and the variance of the queue size and the message delay for the TDMA. The model is used to define and compare five bursty traffic distributions. These distributions are used to study their effects on the buffer size and the end-to-end delay for the Mars Regional Network.