Contention free dynamic slot allocation in cellular networks

A distributed reservation protocol tailored for cellular wireless networks is presented that facilitates contention free inter-cellular slot allocation and reservation. While reserved slots are protected from inter-cell interference by a busy burst enabled reservation protocol, collisions due to simultaneously accessed unreserved slots by neighboring cells are mitigated by means of resource partitioning patterns. Cyclically shifting these partitioning patterns in time allows each cell to successively probe all slots within a fixed time interval. This establishes an intercellular slot contention policy that dynamically controls the initial spatial reuse, in terms of concurrently accessed radio resources by neighboring cells. Despite the controlled spatial reuse of resource during contention, the possibility of a cell to use all available radio resources, if the load and interference situation permits, remains unaffected. As a consequence, loss in spectrum efficiency as observed in frequency-planned cellular systems is avoided.