Investigation of contention resolution algorithms for wireless communication systems

This paper investigates and compares 9 different contention resolution algorithms for wireless communications using a mathematical analysis. The first 4 algorithms, namely EB (exponential backoff), DP (direct-estimate probability), DP+LA (limited access) and DP+OLA (optimum limited access), are suitable for systems with multi-access attempts per frame, whereas the other 5 algorithms, namely CFP (cascade fixed probability), CAP (cascade adaptive probability), COP (cascade optimal probability), SDP (single-access direct-estimate probability) and SEB (single-access exponential backoff) are applicable to systems with single-access chance per frame. Numerical results show that systems with multi-access are in general superior to systems with single-access.