A Dynamic Framed ALOHA Scheme for Batch Resolution in Practical CSMA-Based Wireless Networks

The batch resolution problem consists in arbitrating the channel access of a group of nodes in a wireless network in order to collect a single packet from each node in the shortest time. Most of existing solutions are based on the immediate feedback assumption and typically neglect or underestimate the actual time cost of feedback that can instead be significant in common wireless standards. In this paper, we propose and analyze ABRADE, which is a dynamic framed ALOHA scheme for conflict resolution in practical CSMA-based wireless networks. The core of ABRADE, in fact, is the dynamic adaption of the framed ALOHA parameters to the cardinality of the residual batch, in order to strike a balance between the control message overhead and the fraction of successful transmissions per frame. The parameters optimization is based on a dynamic programming argument that takes into account the time occupancy of successful, collided and idle slots, as well as the time cost of control messages. Compared against classical batch resolution algorithms in practical scenarios, the proposed solution yields up to 10% of throughput gain.