ABSTRACT
Shouting down a pipe is a good method of getting your message across, as long as you’re the only one shouting. This is the main advantage and disadvantage of a multiple-access channel: everybody has to listen to only one place (their hole in the pipe), but if more than one person attempts to transmit at the same time, the message is garbled. This chapter begins with a nonstandard model of Aloha, but one that fits easily into the framework of the theory There are three novelties in this chapter. One, the model of “instantaneous detection” Aloha, is new. Second, the analysis is new-both the heuristic derivation of the capacity of the system, and the large deviations analysis via the finite levels model. Third, the analysis of Gaver and Fayolle's model is both new and is the first rigorous analysis of the paradox that model offers.
