Numerical and simulation method to estimate metastability time interval for slotted ALOHA

Abstract

We consider the classical synchronised multiple access system with a single transmission channel and a randomised transmission protocol (ALOHA). It is well known that this algorithm is not stable, but under some conditions metastability effect is observed (i.e. the algorithm provides the required quality of service on finite but long-term time intervals). We study a method to estimate the metastability time interval for an input stream of i.i.d. sequence of random values.