Maximum Sum Rate of Slotted Aloha with Successive Interference Cancellation

Abstract: This is a sequel of our previous work [8] on characterization of maximum sum rate of slotted Aloha networks. By extending the analysis to incorporate the capacity-achieving receiver structure, Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC), this paper aims to identify the rate loss due to random access. Specifically, two representative SIC receivers are considered, i.e, ordered SIC where packets are decoded in a descending order of their received power, and unordered SIC where packets are decoded in a random order. The maximum sum rate and the corresponding optimal parameter setting including the transmission probability and the information encoding rate in both cases are obtained as functions of the mean received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The comparison to the capture model shows that the gains are significant only with the ordered SIC at moderate values of the mean received SNR $\rho$. With a large $\rho$, the rate gap diminishes, and they all have the same high-SNR slope of $e^{-1}$, which is far below that of the ergodic sum capacity of fading channels. The effect of multipacket reception (MPR) on the sum rate performance is also studied by comparing the MPR receivers including SIC and the capture model to the classical collision model.