On the energy efficiency of wireless random access networks with multi-packet reception

In this paper, we consider wireless random access networks (RANs) with both single packet reception (SPR) and multi-packet reception (MPR) techniques in fading channels, and compare their performance in terms of sum rate and energy efficiency. We adopt a simple power consumption model including transmission power and idle power. With MPR techniques, the transmission rate selection at each user is very important for achieving higher throughput in the uplink of RANs, but the optimal transmission rate at each user may not be feasible in a distributed manner. Thus, we propose a suboptimal rate selection technique in which each user chooses an appropriate transmission rate and, thus, it operates in a distributed manner for practical RANs. It is shown that the MPR yields higher sum rate than the SPR through extensive computer simulations. As for the energy efficiency, the MPR also significantly outperforms the SPR especially when the transmission power is comparable with the idle power.