An Easy Introduction to the Shared Wireless Medium

This chapter deals with the problem of sharing a single wireless communication channel among multiple communication links. It discusses the simplest possible communication model that captures important features of the shared wireless medium, such as broadcast and interference, where the latter is modeled as a collision. The objective is to introduce the main ideas for sharing the channel, such as time‐division duplex and time division multiple access (TDMA), and sketch the elements of a protocol that closely approximates the practical protocols. The portion of the TDMA channel allocated to a device does not need to be constant from the instant of link establishment and until the disconnection of the device. The chapter also discusses how the full‐duplex capability of the wireless devices can contribute to the design of protocols that are more efficient compared to the case of half‐duplex devices.