Neighbor Discovery in Wireless Networks: A Multiuser-Detection Approach

We examine the problem of determining which nodes are neighbors of a given one in a wireless network. We consider an unsupervised network operating on a frequency-flat Gaussian channel, where K + 1 nodes associate their identities to nonorthogonal signatures, transmitted at random times, synchronously, and independently. A number of neighbor-discovery algorithms, based on different optimization criteria, are introduced and analyzed. Numerical results show how reduced-complexity algorithms can achieve a satisfactory performance.