Distributed control of broadcast channels with acknowledgement feedback: Stability and performance

Abstract

It is well known that Aloha multiaccess schemes, with constant retransmission probability and mere acknowledgement feedback, exhibit bistability for large finite users and are unstable (thruput → O) for the infinite user model. We propose an acknowledgement based recursive retransmission procedure which removes bistability for large finite user models and an average success rate of ≃e-1 is maintained. For the infinite user Poisson model, the scheme is not unconditionally stable. However, a high level of success rate can be achieved through certain control variations.