Unequal Error Protection in Coded Slotted ALOHA

TL;DR

This paper analyzes coded slotted ALOHA systems with users having different error protection needs, deriving error floor approximations and proposing optimized degree distributions to ensure class-specific requirements are met.

Contribution

It introduces a heuristic method for optimizing degree distributions in coded slotted ALOHA to achieve unequal error protection for different user classes.

Findings

Error floor approximations for each user class are derived.

Optimized degree distributions improve class-specific error protection.

Better protected users experience reduced decoding delays.

Abstract

We analyze the performance of coded slotted ALOHA systems for a scenario where users have different error protection requirements and correspondingly can be divided into user classes. The main goal is to design the system so that the requirements for each class are satisfied. To that end, we derive analytical error floor approximations of the packet loss rate for each class in the finite frame length regime, as well as the density evolution in the asymptotic case. Based on this analysis, we propose a heuristic approach for the optimization of the degree distributions to provide the required unequal error protection. In addition, we analyze the decoding delay for users in different classes and show that better protected users experience a smaller average decoding delay.