RD2: Resilient Dynamic Desynchronization for TDMA over Lossy Networks

Abstract

We present a distributed TDMA negotiation approach for single-hop ad-hoc network communication. It is distributed, resilient to arbitrary transient packet loss and defines a non-overlapping TDMA schedule without the need of global time synchronization. A participating node can dynamically request a fraction of the static TDMA period T. It will receive its fraction if enough time resources are available. In any case, every node can request and will receive at least a fair fraction of size 1/N. Due to its resilience to arbitrary transient packet loss, the algorithm is well suited for lossy networks like found in wireless communications. Our approach is designed to work in highly dynamic scenarios efficiently. We will show, that it defines a dynamic non-overlapping TDMA schedule even at high packet loss rates. The performance of the TDMA negotiation is analyzed by simulation and compared to results of related work.