Self-stabilizing Deterministic TDMA for Sensor Networks

An algorithm for time division multiple access (TDMA) is found to be applicable in converting existing distributed algorithms into a model that is consistent with sensor networks. Such a TDMA service needs to be self-stabilizing so that in the event of corruption of assigned slots and clock drift, it recovers to states from where TDMA slots are consistent. Previous self-stabilizing solutions for TDMA are either randomized or assume that the topology is known upfront and cannot change. Thus, the question of feasibility of self-stabilizing deterministic TDMA algorithm where topology is unknown remains open.

In this paper, we present a self-stabilizing, deterministic algorithm for TDMA in networks where a sensor is aware of only its neighbors. This is the first such algorithm that achieves these properties. Moreover, this is the first algorithm that demonstrates the feasibility of stabilization-preserving, deterministic transformation of a shared memory distributed program on an arbitrary topology into a program that is consistent with the sensor network model.