Delay and throughput for three transmission schemes in packet radio networks

The results of a simulation of a fully connect packet communication network are presented. The network employs the slotted ALOHA channel access protocol, and Reed-Solomon coding is used to correct errors and erasures in the received packets. The network has a fixed number of channels available for packet transmissions. In two of the transmission schemes considered, a given packet transmission occurs on a single channel only. One of these employs fixed assignment of terminals to the channels, and the other employs random assignment. A third method permits each transmitter to hop randomly over the set of channels during the transmission of a packet. The terminal transmits on one channel at a time, and it transmits a fixed number of symbols during each dwell interval. Delay and throughput are evaluated for all three transmission methods. The effects of code rate on the performance of the channel-hopping scheme are explored, and the improvement that can be obtained for the channel-hopping scheme by use of incremental-redundancy transmission is examined