Multi-round transmission protocol with multipacket reception for multirate IEEE802.11 WLANs

Nowadays, receivers can separate multiple transmitted packets simultaneously through the use of advanced signal processing techniques. This capability is called multi-packet reception (MPR). Currently, several proposals have been made to modify the operation of 802.11 and take advantage of the MPR capability. However, under multi-rate transmissions, these techniques suffer from the phenomenon known as performance anomaly, which results in MPR being under-utilized. In this paper, it is proposed a multi-round transmission (MRT) method for exploiting the MPR capability in the uplink channel over 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs). The proposed method schedules the access to the channel through multiple rounds during the transmission period. Analytical performance is provided and verified with simulations. Results indicate that the MRT method proves an improvement in average throughput closer to 100% when compared to previous approaches.