Performance Analysis of CSMA With Multi-Packet Reception: The Inhomogeneous Case

The problem of carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) with multi-packet reception (MPR) is studied. Most prior work has focused on the homogeneous case, where all the mobile users are assumed to have identical packet arrival rates and transmission probabilities. The inhomogeneous case remains largely open in the literature. In this paper, we make a first step toward this open problem by deriving throughput and delay expressions for inhomogeneous CSMA, with a particular focus on a family of MPR models. This family of MPR models, which allows us to overcome several challenges associated with conventional analysis, is general enough to include a number of interesting MPR techniques—such as successive interference cancellation, compute-and-forward (C&F), and successive C&F (SCF)—as special cases. Based on these throughput and delay expressions, we provide theoretical guidelines for the network design to meet quality-of-service requirements and to achieve global stability; we also evaluate the performances of various MPR techniques, highlighting the clear advantages offered by SCF.