On the instability of slotted aloha with capture

We analyze the stability properties of slotted Aloha with capture for random access over fading channels with infinitely-many users. We assume that each user node knows only its own uplink channel gain, and uses this decentralized channel state information (CSI) to perform power control and/or probability control. The maximum stable throughput (MST) for a general capture model is obtained by means of drift analysis on the backlog Markov chain. We then specialize our general result to a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) capture model. Our analysis shows that if the channels of all users are identical and independently distributed (i.i.d.) with finite means, the system is unstable under any kind of power and probability control mechanism that is based only on decentralized CSI.