Performance Analysis of CSMA/CA Protocols with Multi-packet Transmission

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how combining Multi-packet Transmission with CSMA/CA improves wireless network performance, providing an analytical model and simulations to quantify the benefits under various conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a simple MAC protocol capturing key tradeoffs of MPT with CSMA/CA and develops an analytical model for non-saturated traffic scenarios.

Findings

Analytical model accurately predicts steady-state behavior.

Performance gains increase with more antennas and higher traffic loads.

Simulation results validate the model's effectiveness.

Abstract

Wireless objects equipped with multiple antennas are able to simultaneously transmit multiple packets by exploiting the channel's spatial dimensions. In this paper, we study the benefits of such Multiple Packet Transmission (MPT) approach, when it is used in combination with a Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol for fully interconnected networks, addressing the interactions between the two mechanisms and showing the performance gains that can be achieved. To this end, a very simple Media Access Control (MAC) protocol that captures the fundamental properties and tradeoffs of a CSMA/CA channel access protocol supporting MPT is introduced. Using this protocol as a reference, a new analytical model is presented for the case of non-saturated traffic sources with finite buffer space. Simulation results show that the analytical model is able to accurately characterize the steady-state behaviour of the reference protocol for different number of antennas and different traffic loads, providing a useful tool for understanding the performance gains achieved by MAC protocols supporting MPT.