Effect of TDMA timeslot assignment on traffic delay

In TDMA communications, timeslot assignment has important influence on delay performance, which includes timeslot count (bandwidth assignment), assignment period (TDMA frame length) and timeslot location. In this paper, we firstly proposed traffic delay models based on stochastic service system theory and traffic flow theory for variable bit rate and constant bit rate traffics. Then the analytical formula for average delay was provided. Furthermore, we analyzed the characteristic of influence of timeslot count, assignment period and timeslot location on traffic delay performance, and the results showed that when the timeslot location in frame is more uniform, the average delay and jitter performance of traffic is better. With the mode of consecutive timeslot assignment only increasing bandwidth could promote the delay performance quite limitedly. In TDMA systems with long frame length, such as DVB-RCS satellite systems, the delay performance of traffics can be guaranteed effectively according to uniform timeslot assignment. The validity of proposed models was verified by computer simulation.