The ergodic rate density of ALOHA wireless ad-hoc networks

In recent years, much attention has been paid to the analysis of random wireless ad hoc networks (WANETs) that combine the effect of the physical layer and the medium access layer. However, most works have concentrated on an outage rate model which does not accurately describe the performance of modern communication systems. In this work we consider the ergodic rate density (ERD) of a random ALOHA WANET with a homogenous Poisson point process node distribution. We present two novel lower bounds on the ERD, one for general transmission and reception strategies and the other for receivers with a spatial interference cancellation capability. The bounds are simpler than previously published results for ALOHA WANETs (that have primarily considered the outage rate density). In addition, the bounds and the bounding technique are quite general and enable the derivation of closed form expressions of the ERD for various network models. The efficiency and simplicity of the bounds are demonstrated through several applications, and insights are drawn on the behavior of the network performance as function of the path-loss factor, transmission strategies and number of antennas. Simulation results demonstrate that these simple lower bounds predict the performance of ALOHA WANETs with high accuracy.