In a positive recurrent birth-death-immigration jump chain, let and count immigration events and upward steps before time . The centered immigration indicators form bounded martingale differences; the strong law for martingales with bounded increments and the countable-state Markov chain ergodic theorem give almost surely. The analogous argument for upward steps gives . Summing detailed balance gives , since every step is upward or downward. Therefore converges to the displayed fraction. For this chain the explicit stationary distribution reduces the fraction to .
Use the standard infinite-population slotted ALOHA model with independent fresh arrivals with Poisson distribution , . Newly arrived packets attempt in the next slot. Given old backlogged packets, each independently attempts with fixed probability , so the retransmission count has binomial distribution , independent of and earlier random choices. Let record whether is zero, one, or at least two. A single transmission succeeds and departs; a collision makes every transmitted packet remain. Therefore
Only the present backlog determines the law of the next independent choices, so is a time-homogeneous Markov chain.
For , put and , with . Its nonzero transition probabilities are
For example, a single fresh arrival leaves the backlog unchanged only if no old packet transmits; if an old packet also transmits, that fresh arrival becomes a new backlogged packet. These cases explain the extra diagonal term and the suppressed one-step increase at . At the same formulas hold with , and for .
Here is an almost-sure proof of permanent collisions in constant-probability slotted ALOHA for , rather than just a positive-drift heuristic. For , the conditional exponential increment is
As this tends to a number strictly below one. Choose so the expression is at most one for . Stopping when the chain first enters gives a nonnegative supermartingale. Downward jumps have size at most one, so it hits at . Optional sampling theorem for a supermartingale, first at bounded times and then by a limit, yields the exponential-supermartingale escape bound
This is an irreducible Markov chain: every positive state can successively decrease to zero, and from zero Poisson batches reach every state at least two, with state one then reached from two. An irreducible recurrent Markov chain would hit that finite set with probability one from every state, contradicting the bound. Hence every state is a transient state, every finite set is visited only finitely often, and almost surely.
The conditional success probability is . The centered success indicators form a martingale difference sequence with bounded increments. The strong law for martingales with bounded increments gives
The conditional means have Cesàro average zero, while the strong law of large numbers gives . Therefore almost surely. Finally
decays exponentially along this linear backlog growth. Its sum over is almost surely finite. The Conditional Borel-Cantelli lemma then implies that only finitely many slots have zero or one transmission. Thus . At , a fresh batch of size at least two eventually occurs, after which at least two old packets retransmit in every slot, giving the same conclusion directly.
The qualification is essential: if , then depends only on the independent Poisson arrivals, and zero- or one-arrival slots occur infinitely often. Positive mean arrival rate alone, without the Poisson model or another assumption allowing collisions to develop, would also be insufficient: Bernoulli fresh arrivals and initial backlog zero never collide.
One alternative is binary exponential backoff: after collisions a packet selects a waiting time uniformly from and tries when its counter expires. Its attempt behavior depends on its collision history, rather than a common constant . Another possibility, if a backlog estimate is available, is to set the attempt probability near , keeping the offered retransmission count near one. These descriptions illustrate adaptive access rules; they do not assert that every backoff variant is stable at arbitrary load.
Write for the martingale difference sequence. Bounded increments mean that one deterministic satisfies for every , almost surely. Then and, for ,
The increments are uncorrelated random variables, uniformly bounded in . Applying the supplied strong law for uniformly L2-bounded uncorrelated random variables gives almost surely. Also , because is finite almost surely. Therefore a martingale with bounded increments has zero linear growth:
This is the strong law for martingales with bounded increments.
For the submartingale, let and define its predictable drift and compensator by
This is the Doob decomposition in discrete time. The process is a martingale. Since , we have , so . The result just proved gives almost surely, and . Consequently the strong law for submartingales with bounded increments is
The compensator may grow, so the conclusion is a lower bound rather than a claim of convergence to zero.
Let count immigration events during the first transitions, and let count upward steps during those transitions. Write for the conditional immigration probability. If is the indicator that transition to is immigration, then is a bounded martingale difference with respect to the history that records event types as well as population sizes. The strong law for martingales with bounded increments implies
Since is bounded, the countable-state Markov chain ergodic theorem gives
Applying the same argument to upward-step indicators gives almost surely. To evaluate this denominator, sum detailed balance over all neighboring edges:
Since and , both sums equal . The denominator limit is positive, so division is valid and the immigration fraction among upward steps is
This is the requested answer in terms of . Substituting part (iii) additionally gives , so the fraction simplifies to .
Strong law for submartingales with bounded increments Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
If a submartingale has uniformly bounded increments, then almost surely. In its Doob decomposition in discrete time, the predictable compensator is nondecreasing, while the martingale part has bounded increments. The strong law for martingales with bounded increments makes the latter negligible on the linear scale.