The TDMA MAC implementation in NetSim, does not differentiate between data and control traffic. Both are considered as payloads to be transmitted in available slots without any priority.

However, if you want to reserve certain slots in each frame for control traffic exchange, it can be achieved by modifying the underlying source codes and adding necessary parameters to the user interface.

This will involve identifying:

1. Which slot(s) will be reserved for control?

2. What will be the duration of control slot(s)?

3. What happens to excess control traffic that wasn't sent in the control slots?

4. Does control take into account control traffic from all layers? For instance network layer routing overheads, or is it specific to MAC layer control only?

In order to reserve the first slot for swam coordination messages, the following steps can be followed:

• Customization to GUI: Add a parameter for the First control slot duration.
• Customization to TDMA protocol source codes: Create an additional variable to read and store the GUI parameter. When the TDMA form slot function, reserve the first slot without allocating it to a specific device id and set the slot duration to the value read from GUI. Divide the remaining time time in the frame based on the usual slot duration, into slots and allocate them to devices based on the slot allocation technique chosen.

Further modifications will be required, if you actually want to transmit swarm coordination messages, which includes implementation of the specific message type, creating packets, adding them to queue and sending them on priority in the control slots.

What is the ad hoc routing protocol used? Is it possible to configure OLSR? Then can we see the 1 hop and 2 hop neighbours, as well as the MPR set?