Time Division Multiple Access in Clustered Wireless Networks

Time division multiple access (TDMA) is a channel access method for shared medium networks. It allows several users to share the same frequency channel by dividing the signal into different time slots. The users transmit in rapid succession, one after the other, each using its own time slot. This allows multiple stations to share the same transmission medium (e.g. radio frequency channel) while using only a part of its channel capacity. Based on the network-wide flow distribution calculated from the optimization model and transmission power on every link, we then propose an algorithm for deriving the TDMA schedules, utilizing the slot reuse concept to achieve minimum TDMA frame length. Numerical results reveal that our proposed solution reduces the energy consumption and delay significantly, while simultaneously satisfying a specified reliability objective.