Performance Analysis of Cooperative Random Access with Long PN Spreading Codes

A novel cooperative spread spectrum random access (CSSRA) protocol has been recently proposed. It is shown that thanks to user cooperation the novel protocol can capture part of the available diversity and achieve a marked increase in maximum stable throughput over its non-cooperative counterpart. In this paper, we study the finite-user behavior of a one-packet-buffering CSSRA system with Poisson packet arrivals and derive pertinent performance metrics including throughput, packet loss rate and average packet delay. With the proposed analysis framework, we compare the performance of CSSRA with that of non-cooperative SSRA for a Rayleigh fading channel to illustrate the advantage of user cooperation in terms of throughput as well as delay