Packet Switching in Radio Channels: Part IV - Stability Considerations and Dynamic Control in Carrier Sense Multiple Access

In two companion papers a method for multiplexing a population of terminals communicating with a central station over a packet-switched radio channel was introduced; this method is known as Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA). CSMA, as with ALOHA multiaccess broadcast channels, has the unfortunate property that the throughput falls to zero as the channel load increases beyond a critical value. The dynamic behavior and stability of slotted ALOHA channels have been studied extensively and have led to a definition of stability. In this paper, similar techniques are used to analyze CSMA, which is shown to have a behavior not unlike that of ALOHA. However, contrary to ALOHA channels where steady-state performance is badly degraded when true stability is to be guaranteed, hence requiring dynamic control, we find that CSMA provides excellent stable performance even with as large a population as 1000 terminals. Furthermore, we study a simple adaptive retransmission control procedure which provides a significantly improved channel performance which is insensitive to the population size.