ALOHA with capture over slow and fast fading radio channels with coding and diversity

The effects of capture on the average system throughput and delay performance of slotted ALOHA were analyzed for slow and fast Rayleigh fading radio channels. A short-range multipoint-to-base station packet radio network is considered. It is shown that larger capture effects and thus improved network performance can be achieved with proper choice of modulation. It is also shown that the use of simple error-correcting codes improves capture. The use of selection diversity also improves the capture effect both for fast and slow fading. It is concluded that the inverse distance variability of the received signal is the main reason for the capture effect. The Rayleigh fading alone yields a very small contribution in terms of throughput; nonetheless, it helps to stabilize the system. Numerical results are presented for a slotted ALOHA system with 50 users. It is found that the maximum average throughput can be increased from about 36% to almost 60% by using channel coding and space diversity.<>