Performance of an exponential backoff scheme for slotted-ALOHA protocol in local wireless environment

Slotted ALOHA is widely used in local wireless communications not only by itself as a multiple access protocol but also as a component in many reservation protocols. The paper suggests a very simple backoff scheme for slotted ALOHA and evaluates its performance in local wireless environments. The authors analyze the system capacity in full load conditions and the throughput-delay characteristics in underload conditions. They conduct a computer simulation to evaluate the system performance in transient-state. They also give a protocol parameter value which is highly recommendable from the practical viewpoint. As an application example, they examine the packet reservation multiple access (PRMA) system with the suggested backoff scheme and compare its performance with that of the original PRMA system.>