THROUGHPUT OF THE MULTI-HOP SLOTTED ALOHA WITH MULTI-PACKET RECEPTION

In this paper, we analyse the throughput of a multihop network, where nodes use slotted ALOHA as medium access control (MAC) protocol and are able to receive simultaneously several packets in a slot. We provide a closed-form formula for the throughput in the generic case as a function of the probability, rn,k, for a receiver to decode k packets given that n have been sent in its neighborhood. We then consider several simple models for the computation of the rn,k, when spread slotted ALOHA is used. In particular, we compare the performances of a matched filter (MF) receiver with those of a linear minimum mean-square error (MMSE) multi-user detector (MUD). Capacity results show the great advantage of multi-packet reception and highlight the near-far resistance of the MUD scheme.