On the Advantages of Using Multiuser Receivers in Wireless Ad-hoc Networks

We consider the problem of cross-layer utility maximization subject to stability constraints for a multi-commodity wireless network where all links are sharing a single channel. We assume a time slotted network and only one node is allowed to transmit at any given slot. The optimal cross-layer network control policy can be decomposed into three subproblems: 1) flow control at the transport and network layers, 2) routing and scheduling at the network layer, and 3) resource allocation (RA) at the medium access control and physical layers. Every time slot, a network controller decides the transmitter node, amount of each commodity data admitted to the network layer, schedules different commodities over networks' links and controls the power and rate allocated to every link. In this paper we provide solutions for the RA subproblem for two scenarios: 1) when the nodes are equipped with standard single user receivers, and 2) when the nodes are equipped with multiuser receivers performing successive interference cancelation. In addition we propose decentralized algorithms to obtain the solution of RA subproblem for each scenario. The numerical results show that as the signal-to-noise ratio increases, using multiuser receivers can provide significant gains at the network layer in terms of end-to-end rates and network congestion as compared to that of single user receivers.