A new single channel, time division multiple access (TDMA) schedulingprotocol, termed "Evolutionary-TDMA", is presented for mobile ad hocnetworks. The protocol allows nodes in an ad hoc network to reserveconflict-free TDMA slots for transmission to their neighbors. Two topology-dependent schedules are generated and maintained simultaneously. One is a broadcast schedule inwhich every node has one slot to transmit to all its neighbors. The other isa flexible schedule in which a node can reserve multiple slotsfor transmission of unicast, multicast and broadcast traffic. The schedules are reasonably bandwidth efficient and are frequently updated in an evolutionary manner to maintain conflict-free transmissions. The protocol executes across the entire network simultaneously in a fully distributed and parallel fashion. To react quickly to changing topology and bandwidth demands and to keep overhead low,participating nodes need only coordinate with their one-hop neighbors.Traffic prioritization and Quality of Service (QoS) can be supported with this protocol. Its performance, in terms of both scheduling quality and scheduling overhead, is insensitive to network size. Thus,it is a scalable protocol suitable for very large networks, and networks of varying size.