Diversity Framed Slotted Aloha with Interference Cancellation for Maritime Satellite Communications

Abstract

Providing reliable and efficient connectivity for maritime systems is a key objective to enable new services and to offer anytime-anywhere communication solutions to vessels operating in remote areas (e.g. oceans). Such a task has recently become quite compelling because of the increasing maritime traffic, which should be supported by an information distribution infrastructure in order to guarantee efficient data communication among vessels and control centres on land. To this end, satellites are the perfect candidates for achieving such an objective. This paper focuses on the case of messaging from moving vessels to fixed control centres on land by means of advanced channel random access schemes exploiting time diversity. In more detail, the paper extends an existing theoretical framework to evaluate the packet loss probability in Framed Slotted ALOHA systems by delving into the probability distribution of both colliding users within a frame and their replicas in time slots. The theoretical framework is validated through simulations campaigns, showing a good match between analytical and simulated results.