Random unslotted time-frequency ALOHA: Theory and application to IoT UNB networks

The ALOHA protocol is regaining interest in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), especially for Ultra Narrow Band (UNB) signals. In this case, the classical assumption of channelization is not verified anymore, modifying the ALOHA performances. Indeed, UNB signals suffer from a lack of precision on the actual transmission carrier frequency, leading to a behavior similar to a frequency unslotted random access. In this paper, the success probability and throughput of ALOHA is generalized to further describe frequency-unslotted systems such as UNB. The main contribution of this paper is the derivation of a generalized expression of the throughput for the random time-frequency ALOHA systems. Besides, this study permits to highlight the duality of ALOHA in time and frequency domain.