Comparison of the Maximal Spatial Throughput of Aloha and CSMA in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

Multiple communication protocols are used to organize transmissions from several sources (network nodes) in such a way that scheduled transmissions are likely to be successful. Aloha is one of the most common examples of such a protocol. A major characteristic of Aloha is its great simplicity: the core concept consists in allowing each source to transmit a packet and back-off for some random time before the next transmission, independently of other sources. The main idea of the Carrier-Sense Multiple Access technique (CSMA) is to listen before sending a packet. CSMA is perhaps the most simple and popular access protocol that integrates some collision avoidance mechanism.