Message delay analysis for TDMA schemes using contiguous-slot assignments

An exact analysis is presented of the queue size and message delay of TDMA (time-division multiple-access) systems in which a station is allocated multiple consecutive slots per frame. The authors obtain the generating function of the system queue size for a general independent-arrival message process. They then derive an exact result for the generating function of the message delay distribution for various common message arrival processes. The results are compared with previously derived approximations. The authors prove that a slot-allocation scheme which distributes station slots uniformly over the frame yields a message-delay lower bound. Their results also apply to the analysis of time-shared reservation schemes.<>