A note on optimal input control policy for an Aloha access scheme

Input control policies had been proposed previously (e.g. in Lam and Kleinrock, 1975; and Fayolle et al., 1977) to improve the delay-throughput performance of Aloha access schemes. Through simulation results, Lam and Kleinrock observed that the optimal control policies were in general of control limit type. The authors discuss input control policies for one such Aloha access scheme and prove analytically that the optimal policy is indeed of the control limit type. The optimal policy is found to be extremely simple for the access scheme discussed. This policy is to accept the newly arrived packet if the present system state is either zero or one, and to reject the packet otherwise