On the benefits of successive interference cancellation for ultra narrow band networks : Theory and application to IoT

UNB (Ultra Narrow Band) stands out as one promising PHY solution for low-power, low-throughput and long-range IoT. The dedicated MAC scheme is RFTMA (Random Frequency and Time Multiple Access), where nodes access the channel randomly both in frequency and in time domain, without prior channel sensing. This blind randomness sometimes introduces interference and packet losses. Hence, in this paper, we propose to use the well-known SIC (Successive Interference Cancellation) to cancel the interference in a recursive way. We provide a theoretical analysis of network performance, when considering jointly SIC and the specific spectral randomness of UNB. We analytically and numerically highlight the SIC efficiency in enhancing UNB system performance.