Capacity of Slotted ALOHA in Rayleigh-Fading Channels

Fading channels may improve the capacity of slottedALOHA networks. Rayleigh fading and spatially distributed packet transmitters diminish mutual packet interference and thus reduce the average blocking probability of a shared receiver. A transmission model, combining Poisson statistics of the offered data traffic with Rayleigh statistics for the fading channel, is developed. Analytical and numerical results are presented, indicating significant improvements to signaling in cellular mobile networks and in packet radio systems with fading radio channels.