Hybrid ALOHA: A novel medium access control protocol

In this paper, a novel medium access control (MAC) protocol, name hybrid ALOHA, is proposed to improve the system performance by allowing collision-free channel estimation and simultaneous multiuser data transmission. The idea behind it is to design an MAC protocol that is in favor of the physical (PHY) layer information transmission, and the improved PHY layer, in turn, can improve the MAC performance. Using the general multipacket reception (MPR) model as an interface between the MAC layer and the PHY layer, the hybrid ALOHA protocol is analyzed in terms of throughput, stability, as well as delay behavior. Significant performance improvement is observed in comparison with the traditional ALOHA either with the MPR model or with the collision model.