Self-Stabilizing Deterministic Time Division Multiple Access 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 the topology is unknown remains open. In this paper, we present a self-stabilizing deterministic algorithm for TDMA in networks where a sensor is only aware of its neighbors. To our knowledge, this is the first such algorithm that achieves these properties. Moreover, this is the first algorithm that demonstrates the feasibility of stabilizationpreserving deterministic transformation of a program in shared-memory model on an arbitrary topology into a program that is consistent with the sensor network model.