An integrated approach to distributed demand assignment in multiple-bus local networks

Multiple-bus local networks (MBLNs) provide an architecturally simple solution to serve high-reliability high-capacity local area networks applications. Access mechanisms for MBLNs possessing stability and favorable delay characteristics are developed. A technique is proposed that uses a single explicit token to achieve demand-assignment multiple access (DAMA) to arbitrate access on all buses in the system. The performance of this algorithm in pure DAMA form and its hybrid, carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA-CD), version are discussed. The unique features of the hybrid algorithm are that no backoff policy is needed for colliding messages and the token-passing operation is never suspended, unlike some existing hybrid DAMA approaches