Optimal Channel-Aware ALOHA Protocol for Random Access in WLANs With Multipacket Reception and Decentralized Channel State Information

Perfect decentralized Channel State Information (CSI) is utilized to design an optimal distributed Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) with the multi-packet reception capability, which is available in CDMA systems for example. In particular, the authors consider the scenario where a finite number of users transmit packets to a common access point via a channel-aware ALOHA protocol. They analyze the structure of the optimal channel-aware transmission policies for both the spatially homogeneous WLAN system model, where users deploy identical transmission policies, and the spatially heterogeneous WLAN system model, where users are allowed to deploy different transmission policies.