Performance Evaluation of Flow Allocation with Successive Interference Cancelation for Random Access WMNs

Abstract: In this study we explore the performance gain that can be achieved at the network level by employing successive interference cancelation (SIC) instead of treating interference as noise for random access wireless mesh networks with multi-packet reception capabilities. More precisely we explore both the throughput and the delay of a distributed flow allocation scheme aimed at maximizing average aggregate flow throughput while also providing bounded delay combined with SIC. Simulation results derived from three simple topologies show that the gain over treating interference as noise for this scheme can be up to $15\%$ for an SINR threshold value equal to $0.5$. For SINR threshold values as high as $2.0$ however, this gain is either insignificant or treating interference as noise proves a better practice. The reason is that although SIC improves the throughput on a specific link, it also increases the interference imposed on neighboring receivers. We also show that the gain of applying SIC is more profound in cases of a large degree of asymmetry among interfering links.