Irregular repetition slotted Aloha with multiuser detection: A density evolution analysis

Irregular repetition slotted Aloha (IRSA) has shown significant advantages as a modern technique for uncoordinated random access with massive number of users due to its capability of achieving theoretically a throughput of 1 packet per slot. When the receiver has also the multi-packet reception of multi-user (MUD) detection property, by applying successive interference cancellation, IRSA also obtains very low packet loss probabilities at low traffic loads, but is unable in general to achieve a normalized throughput close to 1. In this paper, we reconsider the case of IRSA with k-MUD receivers and derive the general density evolution equations for the non-asymptotic analysis of the packet loss rate, for arbitrary frame lengths and two operational variants: frame-structured and frameless transmissions. The first one defers transmission attempts until the beginning of the next frame of slots, while the second allows transmission immediately after a packet arrival. Next, using the potential function, we give new capacity bounds on the capacity of the system, showing the threshold arrival rate for zero decoding error probability. Our numerical results illustrate performance in terms of throughput and average delay for k-MUD IRSA with finite memory at the receiver, and also with bounded maximum delay.

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