Design and performance analysis of a MAC protocol for wireless LANs supporting multipacket reception

Recent advances in physical layer technologies, allows simultaneous reception of multiple packets by a node. This promising technology is called Multi-Packet Reception (MPR). In this paper, we analyze a modified IEEE 802.11 DCF based medium access control (MAC) protocol for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) with nodes having MPR capability. Our protocol modifies the backoff mechanism of the IEEE 802.11 DCF so that the backoff process quickly adapts to the prevailing traffic conditions while leveraging MPR. A Markov chain model for the backoff process of the nodes with MPR capability has been derived. Further a Markov chain model to capture the state of the MPR channel has been derived. Solving the Markov chains for stationary probabilities, we derive the saturated throughput and energy efficiency of our protocol. Effect of the number of nodes, MPR capability, contention window size, and sensing errors on the saturation throughput has been investigated. Proposed analytical model has been validated through extensive simulations. Our investigation has the potential to aid in the development of next generation WLAN MAC protocol.