Signal transmission diversity based successive interference cancellation-slotted aloha

Abstract

Efficient medium access protocols are crucial in leveraging the advancement in the physical layer techniques that have been proposed for the next-generation wireless networks. However, collisions among data packets in random access protocols reduce channel efficiency and hence the throughput. In this paper, we propose a MAC protocol based on both the signal transmission diversity and Successive interference cancellation (SIC) to improve the throughput. In the proposed Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol, the receiver receives two sets of signals from the transmitters over two uncorrelated time slots. Inter slot SIC is first carried out at the receiver over two independent sets of received interfered signals. Signals are decoded by canceling those signals that have already been decoded in one set from the other set. Closed-form expressions for the packet decoding probability, system throughput, average packet transmission delay, and energy efficiency have been derived by considering order statistics of received signal power. Analytical results are validated against simulation. Maximum achievable throughput of the proposed scheme is shown to be four times that of slotted Aloha and twice that of a slotted Aloha with SIC.