Performance of Flow Allocation with Successive Interference Cancelation for Random Access WMNs

In this study, we explore the gain that can be achieved by jointly allocating flow on multiple paths and applying successive interference cancelation (SIC), for random access wireless mesh networks with multi-packet reception capabilities. We explore a distributed flow allocation scheme aimed at maximizing average aggregate flow throughput, while also providing bounded delay when SIC is employed. The aforementioned scheme is evaluated both in terms of delay and throughput, and is also compared with other simple flow allocation schemes. We present simulation results from three illustrative topologies. Our results show that the gain for the scheme with SIC, when compared with a variant that treats interference as noise (IAN), can be up to 15.2%, for an SINR threshold value equal to 0.5. For SINR threshold values as high as 2.0 however, SIC does not always result in higher throughput. In some scenarios, the gain of SIC over IAN is insignificant, while in some others treating interference as noise proves to be better. The reason is that, although SIC improves the throughput on a specific link, it also increases the interference imposed on neighboring receivers. We also show that the gain from applying SIC is more profound in cases of a large degree of asymmetry among interfering links.