Dynamic TDMA slot assignment in ad hoc networks

In this paper we propose a TDMA slot assignment protocol to improve the channel utilization, which controls the excessive increase of unassigned slots by changing the frame length dynamically. Our proposed protocol assigns one of the unassigned slots to a node which joins the network. If there are no unassigned slots available, our proposed protocol generates unassigned slots by depriving one of the multiple slots assigned to a node, or enlarging frame length of nodes which can cause collision with each other. Moreover, by setting frame length as a power of 2 slots, our proposed protocol provides the collision-free packet transmission among nodes with different frame length. The simulation results show that our proposed protocol improves the channel utilization dramatically as compared with the conventional protocols.