Power Control Versus Multiuser Detection Based Cross-Layer Design in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, multiple access interference is the limiting factor for the overall system performance. The lack of any central control unit necessitates a careful joint design of both, the physical and the MAC layer. Two promising technologies that address this problem are power control based cross-layer design and multiuser detection based cross-layer design. While approaches in the first category suppress the interference by power control at the transmitter side, approaches in the second cancel interference at the receiver with a technique called multiuser detection. In this paper, the authors compare two cross-layer approaches that are representative of power control based cross-layer design and multiuser detection based cross-layer design, respectively.