SIC and CSI-based Random Channel Access protocol for WLAN supporting Multi packet transmission

Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) is one of the important techniques to decode multiple packets at the receiver and improve the system throughput. However, the IEEE 802.11 standard MAC protocol for Wi-Fi networks does not support multi-packet transmission. In this paper, we propose a modification to the IEEE 802.11 random access scheme for Wireless LAN (WLAN) that supports multi-packet transmission by leveraging the SIC technique at the Access Point (AP). The proposed random access scheme adapts to ongoing traffic conditions while decrementing the backoff counter value. Further, it utilizes the Channel State Information (CSI) to decide the backoff stage of the node. Extensive simulation has been carried out to validate the proposed protocol. Simulation results for the packet transmission probability, packet decoding probability, and throughput have been analyzed.