High-Throughput Random Access Using Successive Interference Cancellation in a Tree Algorithm

Random access is well motivated and has been widely applied when the network traffic is bursty and the expected throughput is not high. The main reason behind relatively low-throughput expectations is that collided packets are typically discarded. In this paper, we develop a novel protocol exploiting successive interference cancellation (SIC) in a tree algorithm (TA), where collided packets are reserved for reuse. Our SICTA protocol can achieve markedly higher maximum stable throughput relative to existing alternatives. Throughput performance is analyzed for general d-ary SICTA with both gated and window access. It is shown that the throughput for d-ary SICTA with gated access is about (ln d)/(d - 1), and can reach 0.693 for d = 2. This represents a 40% increase over the renowned first-come-first-serve (FCFS) 0.487 tree algorithm. Delay performance is also analyzed for SICTA with gated access, and numerical results are provided.