Deterministic Broadcast on Multiple Access Channels

We study broadcasting on multiple access channels by deterministic distributed protocols. Data arrivals are governed by an adversary. The power of the adversary is constrained by the average rate of data injection and a bound on the number of different packets that can be injected in one round. The injection rate is at most 1, which forbids the adversary from overloading the channel. We consider a number of deterministic protocols. For each of them we give an upper bound on the worst-case packet latency, as a function of the constraints imposed on the adversary. We present results of experiments by simulations to compare packet latency of the deterministic protocols and of backoff-type randomized protocols. The experiments are carried out in a simulation environment that captures the burstiness of data injection and the resulting traffic by admissibility condition defined by the fraction of active stations and the rate of changing the status of active versus passive among the stations.

I. Introduction

We study broadcasting on multiple access channels. The goals of this work include demonstrating that deterministic distributed protocols have untapped potential, especially for heavy broadcast loads. We evaluate the performance of protocols in terms of the worst-case packet latency.