Transmission control for spatial TDMA in wireless radio networks

An attractive alternative for communications in areas in which there is little or no telecommunications infrastructure is to use multi-hop packet radio networks (MPRNets). One major design issue in MPRNets is the formulation of medium access control (MAC) protocols. Spatial TDMA (S-TDMA) is a "conflict-free" multiple access for MPRNets, which ensures that a packet transmission, whenever made, is successful. High S-TDMA system capacities can be achieved by incorporating traffic load information into the MAC protocol design. Previous investigations into traffic controlled S-TDMA (TCS-TDMA) protocols used fixed transmission powers. Clearly, the application of power control to these systems could improve the spatial reuse factor. In this paper a suitable power control scheme has been applied to S-TDMA. As the cost of implementing power control is relatively small, and the performance gains are substantial, a prudent design should include power control. As would be expected the introduction of power control would markedly improved the delay performance of S-TDMA.