Block-based Self-organizing TDMA for Reliable VDES in Shipborne Ad-hoc Networks(SANETs)

Abstract

This paper proposes a block-based self-organizing time-division multiple access (BSO-TDMA) protocol for very high frequency (VHF) data exchange system (VDES) in shipborne ad-hoc networks (SANETs). The BSO-TDMA reduces the collisions caused by the simultaneous transmission of automatic identification system (AIS) messages by uniformly allocating channel resources using a block-wise frame. For this purpose, the BSO-TDMA includes two functional operations: (1) frame configuration and (2) slot allocation. The first operation consists of block division and block selection. A frame is divided into multiple blocks, each consisting of fixed-size subblocks, by using the reporting interval (RI) of the ship. Then, the ship selects one of the subblocks within a block by considering the number of occupied slots for each subblock. The second operation allocates the slots within the selected subblock for transmitting AIS messages. First, one of the unoccupied slots within the selected subblock is allocated for the periodic transmission of position reports. Next, to transmit various types of AIS messages, an unoccupied slot is randomly selected from candidate slots located around the previously allocated slot. Experimental simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of BSO-TDMA. The results show that BSO-TDMA has better performance than that of the existing SOTDMA.