Erasure, capture and noise errors in controlled multiple-access networks

We consider an ALOHA-type communication system with many nodes accessing a common receiver through a time-slotted shared radio channel. Due to topological and environmental conditions, the receiver is prone to fail to detect some or all of the packets transmitted in a slot; this phenomenon is called erasure. The receiver may also capture, that is, detect a single transmission out of many. In addition, noise errors may cause the receiver to detect nonexistent collisions. Using the ternary information of detecting 0, 1 packet or a collision at the receiver, the nodes determine their transmission policy. A class of decentralized multi-access algorithms that maintain system stability under the above phenomena are presented, and the maximal throughput they can support is determined. The most remarkable feature of these algorithms is that their maximal throughput is insensitive to some noise errors and erasures.