On the Performance of a Full-Duplex Receiver for Graph-Based Random Access Schemes

Abstract

Graph-based random access protocols have emerged as an efficient solution to tackle the medium sharing problem for machine type communications. Their remarkable performance is well-understood for scenarios in which devices communicate with a one-hop receiver devoted to collecting packets. Many practical applications, however, foresee the receiver to also act as sender towards a second-hop terminal. Under a half-duplex operation constraint, the two tasks would typically be fulfilled by means of time sharing, triggering a tradeoff between the amount of collected and transmitted traffic at the intermediate node. In this perspective, the recent rise of effective self-interference cancellation techniques poses the intriguing question of whether and how much a full-duplex receiver could improve performance in such a setting. To cast light on the issue, we refine the asymptotic analysis of successive interference cancellation procedures at the receiver of a graph-based random access scheme. In doing so, we account for the degradation in decoding probability due to residual self-interference when operating in full-duplex mode, and derive a tight lower bound to the achievable packet loss rate. We then analyse the throughput as a function of some key parameters that drive the system, identifying relevant tradeoffs and design hints.