Generalized Slotted-Aloha in Cooperative , Competitive and Adversarial Environments

Aloha [1] and its slotted variation [2] are commonly deployed Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols in environments where multiple transmitting devices compete for a medium, yet may have difficulty sensing each other’s presence. This is also known as the “hidden terminal problem”. Competing 802.11 [3] gateways, as well as most modern digital cellular systems, like GSM[4], are examples. This paper models and evaluates the throughput that can be achieved in a system where nodes compete for bandwidth using a generalized version of slottedAloha protocols. The protocol is implemented as a two-state system, where the probability that a node transmits in a given slot depends on whether the node’s prior transmission attempt was successful. Using Markov Models, we evaluate the channel utilization and fairness of these types of protocols for a variety of node objectives, including maximizing aggregate throughput of the channel, each node greedily maximizing its own throughput, and attacker nodes that attempt to jam the channel. If all nodes are selfish and greedily attempt to maximize their own throughputs, a situation similar to the traditional Prisoner’s Dilemma[5] arises. Our results reveal that under heavy loads, a greedy strategy reduces the utilization, and that attackers cannot do much better than attacking during randomly selected slots.