Effect of errors on a contention-based TDMA protocol

A hybrid contention-based time-division multiple access (TDMA) protocol was previously proposed for data transmission (D. Tsai et al., IEEE Trans. on Communications, COM-36, Feb. 1988, p.225-8). It provides satisfactory performance for an error-free channel. The effect of channel errors on the performance of this protocol is studied. To remain operational the protocol must be modified, and the modified protocol is then analyzed. Results derived include the average of frame length, the number of slots wasted, the number of residual packets, and delay. Numerical examples show that channel errors can sometime be damaging but can be recovered by proper error control codes