Status sense multiple-access (S2MA) communication

A new contention-based multi-access protocol, named status sense multiple access (S²MA), is introduced. S²MA is synchronous TDMA in its framing but it possesses many features of random access. The approach of S²MA is geared towards integrating heterogeneous classes of customers over a common broadcast channel. The performance of this protocol with two classes of customers, such as voice and data, is analyzed. Unlike fixed and some moveable-boundary approaches of integrating voice and data, here no slot is wasted, except for possible collision, as long as there is a demand for the slot from either of the two classes. Therefore, the channel utilization efficiency can be very high