Multi-Receiver Aloha Systems – a Survey and New Results

Abstract

This paper focuses on the beneficial effects brought by the presence of multiple receivers to a slotted Aloha scheme. Starting from an analytical angle, we review and compare some recent results that characterize the throughput of such systems under different channel models, based on the assumption that incoming powers at receivers follow an i.i.d. distribution. While practical in some scenarios, this hypothesis does not hold when the path loss experienced by different users, or by a user seen by different receivers, starts to play a role. We shed light on this aspect by means of detailed simulations, and derive some relevant insights on the achievable diversity gain. The impact of successive interference cancelation in this context is also evaluated.