Software-defined dynamic power-control and directional-reuse protocol for TDMA radios

This paper presents a distributed protocol that supports power control and directional spectrum reuse for TDMA-based MANET waveforms. This protocol was developed as an add-on module to a distributed resources manager designed to provide MANET nodes with neighborhood spectrum utilization information, as well as perform dynamic negotiation of the available shared spectrum. The protocol utilizes spectrum awareness messaging that is defined per each channel and per TDMA slot. This protocol allows each node to allocate resources (channel and slot) based on demand without interfering with existing users of that channel and slot while maximally reusing spectrum resources. The proposed protocol also identifies and reacts to conflicts resulting when two disparate networks join as a result of mobility. This paper presents simulation results showing the gain in network throughput obtained in comparison to standard omni-directional antennas using a OPNET model of a tactically relevant military waveform.