Aloha

Abstract: Radio communication is considered as a method for providing remote terminal access to computers. Digital byte streams from each terminal are partitioned into packets (blocks) and transmitted in a burst mode over a shared radio channel. When many terminals operate in this fashion, transmissions may conflict with and destroy each other. A means for controlling this is for the terminal to sense the presence of other transmissions; this leads to a new method for multiplexing in a packet radio environment: carrier sense multiple access (CSMA). Two protocols are described for CSMA and their throughput-delay characteristics are given. These results show the large advantage CSMA provides as compared to the random ALOHA access modes.

Abstract: This paper was originally distributed informally as ARPA Satellite System Note 8 on June 26, 1972. The paper is an important one and since its initial limited distribution, the paper has been frequently referenced in the open literature, but the paper itself has been unavailable in the open literature. Publication here is meant to correct the previous gap in the literature.As the paper was originally distributed only to other researchers intimately familiar with the area covered by the paper, the paper makes few concessions to the reader along the lines of introductory or tutorial material. Therefore, a bit of background material follows.ALOHA packet systems were originally described by Abramson ("The ALOHA System--Another Alternative for Computer Communication," Proceedings of the AFIPS Fall Joint Computer Conference, Vol. 37, 1970, pp. 281--285). In an ALOHA a single broadcast channel is shared by a number of communicating devices. In the version originally described by Abramson, every device transmits its packets independent of any other device or any specific time. That is, the device transmits the whole packet at a random point in time; the device then times out for receiving an acknowledgment. If an acknowledgment is not received, it is assumed that a collision occured with a packet transmitted by some other device and the packet is retransmitted after a random additional waiting time (to avoid repeated collisions). Under a certain set of assumptions, Abramson showed that the effective capacity of such a channel is 1/(2e).Roberts in the present paper investigates methods of increasing the effective channel capacity of such a channel. One method he proposes to gain in capacity is to consider the channel to be slotted into segments of time whose duration is equal to the packet transmission time, and to require the devices to begin a packet transmission at the beginning of a time slot. Another method Roberts proposes to gain in capacity is to take advantage of the fact that even though packets from two devices collide in the channel (i.e., they are transmitted so they pass through the channel at overlapping times), it may be possible for the receiver(s) to "capture" the signal of one of the transmitters, and thus correctly receive one of the conflicting packets, if one of the transmitters has a sufficiently greater signal than the other. Roberts considers the cases of both satellite and ground radio channels.

Abstract: In multihop packet radio networks with randomly distributed terminals, the optimal transmission radii to maximize the expected progress of packets in desired directions are determined with a variety of transmission protocols and network configurations. It is shown that the FM capture phenomenon with slotted ALOHA greatly improves the expected progress over the system without capture due to the more limited area of possibly interfering terminals around the receiver. The (mini)slotted nonpersistent carrier-sense-multiple-access (CSMA) only slightly outperforms ALOHA, unlike the single-hop case (where a large improvement is available), because of a large area of "hidden" terminals and the long vulnerable period generated by them. As an example of an inhomogeneous terminal distribution, the effect of a gap in an otherwise randomly distributed terminal population on the expected progress of packets crossing the gap is considered. In this case, the disadvantage of using a large transmission radius is demonstrated.

Abstract: An Aloha-type access control mechanism for large mobile, multihop, wireless networks is defined and analyzed. This access scheme is designed for the multihop context, where it is important to find a compromise between the spatial density of communications and the range of each transmission. More precisely, the analysis aims at optimizing the product of the number of simultaneously successful transmissions per unit of space (spatial reuse) by the average range of each transmission. The optimization is obtained via an averaging over all Poisson configurations for the location of interfering mobiles, where an exact evaluation of signal over noise ratio is possible. The main mathematical tools stem from stochastic geometry and are spatial versions of the so-called additive and max shot noise processes. The resulting medium access control (MAC) protocol exhibits some interesting properties. First, it can be implemented in a decentralized way provided some local geographic information is available to the mobiles. In addition, its transport capacity is proportional to the square root of the density of mobiles which is the upper bound of Gupta and Kumar. Finally, this protocol is self-adapting to the node density and it does not require prior knowledge of this density.