MAXIMUM A POSTERIORI ESTIMATION OF CHANNEL LOAD.

Resolving contentions in CSMA/CD networks may be reduced to the problem of determining the minimum among a set of distributed random numbers. A minimum search algorithm utilizing collision detections can identify the minimum in a constant time if the number of contending stations is known. However, this number is not available since packets arrive randomly, and hence, has to be estimated. Prior research works in this area either assumed that this number is known or discarded valuable information obtainable from the execution of the minimum-search algorithm. In this paper, we employ a Poisson a priori model and utilize all information obtained in the execution of the minimum-search algorithm to derive the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate for this number.