Abstract
We present the results of simulation experiments that compare end-to-end error management (used in controlled access MAC protocols) against hop-by-hop error management (used in random access MAC protocols). Our experiments are novel in that we restrict both MAC schemes to identical power budgets and power distribution strategies. By making such a normalized comparison, we observe that end-to-end schemes are more effective than hop-by-hop schemes at reducing connection BER. We are also able to quantify the sensitivity of this relative advantage to various environmental parameters, including power budget size, geographic distance, the number of hops, and power distribution scheme.