Bounds on the throughput in frequency-hop packet radio networks with convolutional coding

Lower bounds are developed for the throughput of a slotted, asynchronous frequency-hop packet radio network in which convolutional coding and Viterbi decoding are used for error control. The methods used for bounding the packet error probability for convolutional encoding and Viterbi decoding do not require prior knowledge of the complete transfer function for the code generator. These methods are applied to the problem of bounding the throughput in a frequency-hop radio network. For the results presented, the channel is a multiple-access channel with no other noise or interference, and it is assumed that perfect side information is available to erase symbols that have been hit.<>