A Contention-Based TDMA Technique for Data Transmissions through Satellite

The performance of a contention-based time-division multiple access (TDMA) technique is studied. Time axis of the channel is organized into frames. Each frame consists of three parts: minislot subframe, fixed subframe, and variable subframe. Users are partitioned into groups. Each group is given a data slot in the fixed subframe. A collision occurs when more than one user in the samegroup tries to access the same slot. The minislot subframe is used to identify the users involved in a collision. Each of these colliding users will be given a data slot in the variable subframe. Results obtained include average queue length and average delay, etc. The validity of analyses is also verified by computer simulations.