Time slot assignment in a heterogeneous environment of a SS/TDMA system

In this paper we consider the time slot assignment for a heterogeneous environment in which circuit-switched traffic and packet-switched traffic share the same satellite. In constructing a single time division multiple access (TDMA) frame for both traffic types, their different characteristics must be taken into account. This problem is known to be NP-complete and a couple of heuristic partial optimization algorithms have been developed. In this paper, we first provide a theoretical result to improve the existing partial optimization algorithms; then a fully optimizing heuristic algorithm is presented. Simulation results show that our algorithm provides a much better solution quality than existing ones. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.