CODING AND STABILITY IN FREQUENCY-HOP PACKET RADIO NETWORKS

A fully connected radio network is considered in which packets are sen t using slow frequency-hop (FH) modulation, slotted ALOHA random acces s, and Reed-Solomon (RS) error-control coding, For this network, the d ependence of throughput, delay, and drift on code rate and block lengt h is examined. It is shown that drift approaches a simple limiting for m as the block length becomes large, This form suggests that, in a bis table FH network, the undesirable stable point can usually be eliminat ed without increasing delay or reducing throughput at the desirable st able point, In particular, bistability can be eliminated by increasing code block length and retransmission delay, and does not require the use of decentralized control or channel traffic estimates.