A five-phase reservation protocol (FPRP) for mobile ad hoc networks

A new single channel, time division multiple access (TDMA) based broadcast, scheduling protocol, termed the five-phase reservation protocol (FPRP), is presented for mobile ad hoc networks. The protocol jointly and simultaneously performs the tasks of channel access and node broadcast scheduling. The protocol allows nodes to make reservations within TDMA broadcast schedules. It employs a contention-based mechanism with which nodes compete with each other to acquire TDMA slots. The FPRP is free of the “hidden terminal” problem, and is designed such that reservations can be made quickly and efficiently with negligible probability of conflict. It is fully-distributed and parallel (a reservation is made through a localized conversation between nodes in a 2-hop neighborhood), and is thus arbitrarily scalable. A “multihop ALOHA” policy is developed to support the FPRP. This policy uses a multihop, pseudo-Bayesian algorithm to calculate contention probabilities and enable faster convergence of the reservation procedure. The performance of the protocol is studied via simulation, and the node coloring process is seen to be as effective as an existing centralized approach. Some future work and applications are also discussed