Demand assignment for light-route TDMA

With the fluctuating inter-nodal traffic levels that characterize light-route networks, demand assignment (DA) provides the means of increasing the system's effective effective capacity. This paper focuses on the application of DA in light-route TDMA, and proposes a control architecture that is well-suited to service of heterogeneous traffic. The major advantage of the proposed architecture is its benefit from both the efficient resource management typical of centralized schemes, and the shorter response times of distributed schemes. The impact of the assignment algorithm on the grade of sevice to heterogeneous populations, and the difficulty in quantifying this impact are also addressed. Results from analytical and simulation models illustrating resource utilization are presented.