Predictive multicast polling for wireless networks with multipacket reception and queuing

In this paper, we propose the predictive multicast polling scheme for medium access control in wireless networks with multipacket reception capability. We concentrate on the case in which the packet arrival process is general and the maximum queue size is finite but larger than one. We derive both analytical results and simulation results. We use the theory of discrete-time Markov chain to analyze the evolution of the system state. In addition, we propose to use Markov reward processes to calculate the exact value of the network throughput. Furthermore, we obtain the average system size, the packet blocking probability, and the average packet delay. We show that our numerical results are consistent with simulation results. We also use simulation results to justify the usage of the proposed approach. Our study shows that the system performance can be significantly improved with a few additional buffers in the queues.