948

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 49, NO. 3, MAY 2000

Slotted ALOHA Mobile Packet Communication Systems with Multiuser Detection in a Base Station
Takeshi Shinomiya and Hiroshi Suzuki, Member, IEEE
AbstractA slotted ALOHA mobile packet communication system utilizing the multiuser detection (MD) is proposed for system enhancement. MD can be easily implemented by using an adaptive interference canceler. Employment of MD enables simultaneous detection of several collision packets, which results in system enhancement increasing the throughput and shortening the average delay time. Detailed theoretical analysis and computer simulation with a two-user simultaneous detection in a single-cell environment shows: 1) the throughput increases twice as much as the conventional one and 2) the average delay time decreases by 50%. Index TermsCapture effect, carrier sense multiple access (CSMA), maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE), mobile packet communication, multiuser detection, throughput.

Fig. 1. Packet mobile communication system using multiuser detection.

I. INTRODUCTION IGHLY reliable and efficient digital signal transmission systems for higher bit-rate transmission are required for future mobile communications to expand computer network systems. In the future, it is expected that not only real-time signaling of voice and audio visual, but also burst signaling of various types of multimedia information will be intensively required. In order to satisfy such requirements, research and development of efficient radio packet communication systems are under study [1][3]. There are several simple multiple-access packet communication systems such as pure ALOHA and slotted ALOHA. The pure ALOHA is the simplest, and the terminals of this system access randomly. The slotted ALOHA, being one of the modified pure ALOHA, divides time into slots and synchronizes all the terminals. Although these systems are simple to realize, the throughput value of the slotted ALOHA is limited to approximately 0.35 due to the collision of the packets [2]. In radio packet systems, the throughput or system capacity is slightly increased to around 0.4 due to the capture effect [4]. This effect is caused by received signal power fluctuation due to fading, which results in a power level difference, and packets having the largest power level above a CIR threshold can be detected at the base-station receiver. Conventional packet systems employ single-user detector, and the maximum throughput is limited to one.
Manuscript received April 10, 1998; revised March 17, 1999. This paper was presented at the IEEE VTS 48th Vehicular Technology Conference, May 1998. This work was supported by the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation. T. Shinomiya is with Canon, Inc., Tokyo 146-8501, Japan. H. Suzuki is with the International Cooperation Center for Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan. Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9545(00)03668-9.

This paper proposes a slotted ALOHA packet mobile communication system utilizing multiuser detection (MD) implemented by using adaptive interference canceler in order to enhance the system capacity. MD is located in the receiver at the base station in the uplink, and it can simultaneously detect multiuser signals in collision. The adaptive interference canceler for time-division multiple access (TDMA) has been successfully implemented and demonstrated in TDMA transmission [5][10]. The uplink throughput is expected to increase by using the MD. This paper shows the proposed configuration of the mobile packet system. Analysis and computer simulation, including conventional slotted ALOHA, show the performance improvement in throughput and average delay time. II. SLOTTED ALOHA SYSTEMS WITH MULTIUSER DETECTION A. Configuration The proposed system employs MD at the base station in the uplink. Fig. 1 shows the configuration of the proposed slotted ALOHA with MD. Although the decoder of the conventional slotted ALOHA system receives signals directly, MD performs adaptive detection processing of the received signals which sometimes consists of several packets in a collision, and MD can extract the respective information streams effectively. The new slotted ALOHA assumes the following. The slot synchronization between base station and terminals are almost complete, and the bit-level synchronization in the uplink is achieved. The packet generation process, which consists of both new packet origination and packet retransmission, follows a Poisson distribution. There are several schemes for MD. Here, the adaptive interference canceler employing the recursive least squares maximum likelihood sequence estimation (RLS-MLSE) scheme is adopted [5][10].

00189545/00$10.00 2000 IEEE

SHINOMIYA AND SUZUKI: SLOTTED ALOHA MOBILE PACKET COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

949

Fig. 2.

Multiuser detection configuration given by ICE using RLS-MLSE.

B. Principle of Interference Canceler Fig. 2 shows the principle of MD. A canceler with adaptive equalization is employed, and it is known as interference canceling equalizer (ICE) [5][8]. The equalization function is effective for the frequency selective fading environments and also for inevitable synchronization error within one symbol duration if the equalizer is designed for one symbol delay distortion. RLS-MLSE is a detection scheme that utilizes the RLS algorithm for parameter estimation and MLSE, or Viterbi algorithm, for sequential symbol estimation. Parameter estimation and adaptation is performed per survivor base because the carrier fluctuation must be tracked accurately for MD. It utilizes a training signal for initial startup. Training signals are almost mutually orthogonal. It is also assumed that the data sequences of the different packets are quasi-orthogonal due to randomness of the data or scrambling. The effectiveness of the two-user MD of RLS-MLSE-type ICE has already been demonstrated experimentally by a real-time DSP hardware simulation and field trial using the Japanese digital cellular system [personal digital cellular system (PDC)] specification [7], [8]. Operation of the ICE has already been analyzed in detail, and the results are summarized as follows. An increase of the number of simultaneously detected users would increase the system capacity. However, a large number of users produces an increase of cross-correlation between user signals which causes channel estimation error in the adaptation process. The computer simulation and field trial suggests that up to three simultaneously transmitted packets can be detected in the PDC system. This paper theoretically treats the user simultaneous detection in gensystem performance for eral. However, in computer simulations we assume MD with Such performance was proved experimentally. It is well known from the computer simulations that the BER performance of RLS-MLSE ICE suffers severe degradation if the received power of the simultaneous users are almost equal and the relative phase of the two carriers is at special values. The degradation is due to the ambiguity of the transmitted symbols at the special constellations of the combined received signal [6]. This phenomena is modeled in the following computer simulations. The actual MD has practical drawbacks from the ideal operation. In the RLS-MLSE-type cancelers, performance degrada-

tion occurs due to: 1) incomplete channel impulse response estimation and 2) error propagation in the Viterbi algorithm. The following discussion assumes that the above degradation of MD performance is negligible. III. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS A. Throughput Analysis Under Ideal Condition Here, the throughput performance analysis is carried out under the following conventional ideal assumptions. There is no thermal noise nor fading. The number of users in the total multiple-access system is sufficiently large. There is a single-cell environment. Power control of the uplink is perfect, and each received signal power is at a constant level. The training signals are mutually orthogonal, and they can be perfectly separated by MD in a base station. MD can separate up to user information sequences, and the degradation due to the ambiguity is negligible. user information MD cannot separate more than sequences. Since the packet generation in each slot follows a Poisson packets, , can be process, the probability of creating expressed by (1) When a user transmits a packet, it can be received without loss if the number of packets generated by others is lower than The probability that this situation occurs is the probability of up packets collide and it is denoted by to The probability is the sum of the probabilities that the number of packets generated by other users falls in the range 0 and then to (2) It should be noted that the simultaneous -user reception implies an increase of throughput of the system with MD. The is one, however, the bound for is rough bound for

950

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 49, NO. 3, MAY 2000

(a)

(b)

(c) Fig. 3. Performance (ideal). (a) Throughput performance. (b) Average normalized delay G=S versus channel traffic G: (c) Average normalized delay G=S versus throughput S:

Exact throughput expression for following:

is obtained by the

2)

: Two-user MD has high possibility for real and are as follows: applications, and (7) (8)

(3) is used for estimating the The number of transmissions average normalized delay time, and it is given by the channel traffic divided by the throughput (4)

The throughput has the maximum value when 3) : If it is possible for MD to receive three packets and simultaneously without degradation, become as follows: (9) (10)

Three examples are shown below. : This is the conventional slotted ALOHA. The 1) throughput and the average normalized delay can be obtained from (3) and (4) as follows: (5)

(6) Therefore, the maximum throughput is given by when

The throughput has the maximum when This value for is obtained by a numerical method. Fig. 3 shows the results obtained above. Fig. 3(a) shows the throughput versus channel traffic, and Fig. 3(b) shows the average normalized delay versus channel traffic. Fig. 3(c) shows

SHINOMIYA AND SUZUKI: SLOTTED ALOHA MOBILE PACKET COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

951

(a)

(b)

(c) Fig. 4. Performance (comparison CSMA, a = 0:01). (a) Throughput. (b) Average normalized delay versus channel traffic. (c) Average normalized delay versus throughput.

the throughput versus the average normalized delay obtained from Fig. 3(a) and (b). Fig. 3(a) shows that the throughput inincreases. Fig. 3(b) and (c) shows that there is an creases as improvement of the average delay time along the increase of and they also show that it is possible to achieve more throughput with less average delay time. B. Comparison with a CSMA System Nonpersistent carrier-sense multiple-access (CSMA) system is conventionally known as another improved ALOHA systems. This system reduces the probability of packet collision by using a sensor at each terminal which senses the carrier and transmits a packet if the radio channel is idle [3]. Here, a comparison and between the slotted ALOHA system with MD the nonpersistent CSMA system is presented. The throughput of the slotted nonpersistent CSMA system is given by (11a) and the delay time equation is (11b)

where is spreading delay time normalized by the slot duration. The performance characteristics of the throughput and the average normalized delay of the slotted nonpersistent CSMA under a condition corresponding to Fig. 3 is calculated and shown in Fig. 4. Comparing this system with the slotted , it can be seen that values of ALOHA with MD the maximum throughput are almost the same, although the corresponding traffic values are different. For this case, the traffic for the maximum throughput of the system with MD is is lower than that for the CSMA. In the range where below three, the system with MD is better, and in the range CSMA is better. Fig. 4(b) shows the average time performance and indicates that the system with MD is superior to CSMA for a traffic lower than three. Fig. 4(c) shows the average normalized delay performance versus throughput, and demonstrates that the system with MD is superior to CSMA in all the throughput range. CSMA requires a channel carrier sensing device in each terminal, and in mobile communications applications its performance degrades due to the hidden terminal problem. On the other hand, the proposed system requires only the introduction of MD at the base stations, and it does not require any additional device to the conventional slotted-ALOHA terminals. Furthermore, the hidden terminal problem does not exist. Therefore, by using the same terminals as in the conventional slotted ALOHA

952

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 49, NO. 3, MAY 2000

systems, an increase of throughput and a decrease of average delay time can be achieved in the proposed MD system. C. Analysis Under Rayleigh Fading Conditions Here, the packet system performance in a Rayleigh fading environment is evaluated under the following conditions. The packet from each terminal is received by a base station through a mutually statistical independent Rayleigh fading channel. The received power of the th largest packet is when packets are denoted by simultaneously detected. The fading varies so slowly that variation during one packet duration can be negligible. MD is utilized. Two-user The channel parameter estimating is complete. 1) Without MD: A base station of slotted ALOHA system can receive only one packet, the one whose received power is the largest. Considering the capture effect, the condition that a packet can be detected is given by (12) is the thermal noise power. where is the capture ratio and The throughput of the conventional slotted ALOHA system was given in [4] taking the capture effect into consideration under the Rayleigh fading condition. The derived formula did not consider the influence of the thermal noise. The throughput performance including the thermal noise effect can be expressed as (13) where is the average CNR. Details of the derivation are presented in Appendix A. 2) With MD: The system with MD can detect up to two packets simultaneously. The condition under which only one packet can be received is the same as without MD and it is given by (14) The condition in which both the maximum and the second power packets can be detected is given by (15) In this case, as pointed out in Section II-B, the base station may not be able to receive neither two packets if the amplitude and phase of these two signals satisfy the special conditions. These conditions are avoided when the following inequality is satisfied: (16)

Fig. 5. Throughput (without fading).

where and are the complex envelopes of the two packets. The packets can be received only when (15) and (16) are satisfied. It is difficult to derive analytically the throughput of the system with MD, and therefore the performance is evaluated by computer simulation. IV. COMPUTER SIMULATION A. Performance in Static Environment Fig. 5 shows the computer simulation results without fading. The solid lines are given by (5) and (7). This figure shows that the theoretical and the computer simulation results agree very well. B. Performance in Rayleigh Fading Environment 1) High CNR Condition: The computer simulation is carried out under a Rayleigh fading condition. The results obtained in a high average CNR equal to 25 dB is first shown in this section. Fig. 6, in which the parameter is the capture ratio , shows and (b) without MD. The solid the results (a) with MD curves in Fig. 6(b) show the theoretical values given by (13). It can be seen that the theoretical curves and the simulation results agree well in this figure. The performance in the Rayleigh fading condition shown in Fig. 6(a) is very close to that of ideal operation of MD with shown in Fig. 4(a). Note that for the low capture ratio the performance with fading is superior to that without fading because of the capture effect. The reasons why the performances in these two figures are alike are because: 1) the noise can be negligible under high CNR condition and 2) CNIR is usually larger than the capture ratio even if the received signal levels fluctuate randomly in a Rayleigh fading channel. In Fig. 6(b), the lines given by (13), which agree with the in Fig. 4(a) due to simulation, are larger than those for the capture effect. Comparing Fig. 6(a) with (b), it can be seen that the performance in Fig. 6(a) is superior to that in Fig. 6(b). The results shown in Figs. 5 and 6 indicate that employment of MD increases the throughput both under Rayleigh fading and static conditions. 2) Low CNR Condition: Fig. 7 shows the results of the comand (b) without MD in puter simulation (a) with MD low CNR condition where average CNR = 15 dB. The lines in Fig. 7(b) are theoretical given by (13).

SHINOMIYA AND SUZUKI: SLOTTED ALOHA MOBILE PACKET COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

953

(a) Fig. 6. Throughput in fading (CNR = 25 dB). (a) With MD,

M = 2 (b) Without MD.

:

(b)

(a) Fig. 7. Throughput in fading (CNR = 15 dB). (a) With MD, M = 2: (b) Without MD.

(b)

Comparison between Figs. 6 and 7 shows that the throughput under the low CNR condition is degraded from that of the high CNR condition. Note that the curves in Fig. 7 are more dependent on the capture ratio parameter than the ones in Fig. 6. The reason for the degradation and parameter sensitivity in the low CNR condition are due to: 1) the probability of instantaneous CNIR of the largest received signal exceeding the capture ratio decreases and 2) relatively large noise results in larger probability of symbol ambiguity occurrence where (16) is not satisfied even though (15) is held by the largest two signals. Therefore, the throughput is decreased when the received level is low. Comparing Fig. 7(a) with (b), it can be seen that the employment of MD increases the throughput under these severe fading and noisy condition. V. CONCLUSION This paper proposed an enhanced slotted ALOHA system by employing multiuser detection in the base station to simultaneously receive multiuser packets. It was shown that in the static condition where the multiuser detection ideally operates, employing multiuser detection increases the throughput of the conventional pure slotted ALOHA equal system, and the throughput of the system with MD for to two is approximately equal to that of slotted nonpersistent CSMA system which is known as high-performance random-access system. Concerning the average delay time, it was shown that in the available throughput region the average delay time of the system with MD is shorter than that of the CSMA.

In fading condition, it was shown that the throughput increases twice as much as that of the conventional one, and the average delay time becomes half by employing multiuser detection under both Rayleigh fading and noisy conditions. APPENDIX A THROUGHPUT IN FADING CHANNELS

DERIVATION

OF

AND

NOISY

Let us derive the throughput expression of the slotted ALOHA system under fading and noisy condition. The analysis condition is the same as that of Section III-C. Considering the thermal noise, the condition that the packets can be detected is given by (12). When the average packet power is the probability density function of the instantaneously received power at base station under the Rayleigh fading condition is given by (A-1) It is assumed that the packet with maximum received power transmitted packets is the desired signal and the among the packets are interference signals. Then the capture other probability that the maximum received power packet among packets can be detected becomes (A-2)

954

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 49, NO. 3, MAY 2000

where is CNIR, and is the probability density function The joint probability density function of and is as of follows: (A-3) packet where is the sum of interference power of is the probability density function of , and and noise, is the joint probability density function of and is obtained by integrating (A-3) with respect to (A-4) Evaluation of is carried out by using (A-2) and (A-4) and

Since , the number of packets, follows a Poisson process with average traffic , the throughput can be obtained as follows:

(A-11) The average CNR is given by (A-12) Then (A-11) becomes

(A-5) When the sum of received power of and the probability density of is and becomes collision packets is the relation between

(A-13) the above equation converges to the known equation If given by [4] (A-14)

(A-6) Because (A-6) shows (A-5) becomes as follows: ACKNOWLEDGMENT (A-7) Considering in REFERENCES (A-8) is times the convolution function of because is the sum of the received power of collision packets
[1] N. Abramson, The throughput of packet broadcasting channels, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-25, pp. 117128, Jan. 1976. [2] , Multiple Access Communications. New York: IEEE Press, Nov. 1992, pp. 231376. [3] D. Bertsekas and R. Gallager, Data Networks. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987. [4] J. C. Arnbak and W. V. Blitterswijk, Capacity of slotted ALOHA in Rayleigh-fading channels, IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., vol. SAC-5, pp. 261269, Feb. 1987. [5] K. Fukawa and H. Sukuzi, Blind interference cancelling equalizer for mobile communications, IEICE Trans. Commun., vol. E77-B, no. 5, pp. 580584, May 1994. [6] H. Yoshino, K. Fukawa, and H. Suzuki, Interference canceling equalizer (ICE) for mobile radio communication, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 46, pp. 849861, Nov. 1997. [7] H. Yoshino and H. Suzuki, In-lab performance evaluation results of interference canceling equalizer (ICE), in Proc. Int. Conf. Digital Signal Processing DSP 97, vol. 2, Santorini, Greece, July 1997, pp. 10031006. [8] H. Yoshino, K. Hirade, and H. Suzuki, Field trial results of interference canceling equalizer (ICE) for TDMA mobile communication systems, , to be published. [9] H. Murata and S. Yoshida, Trellis coded co-channel interference canceler for microcellular radio, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 45, pp. 10881094, Sept. 1997. [10] K. Kitagawa, A. Okazaki, H. Murata, and S. Yoshida, Implementation of 2 Mbps adaptive MLSE using FPGA, IEICE Tech. Rep. RCS 97-83, Sept. 1997.

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for detailed comments on the manuscripts.

(A-9)

, and Equation (A-9) includes Laplace transform on Laplace transform on convolution function is given by the product of Laplace transformation on the respective functions. Then (A-9) becomes as follows:

(A-10)

SHINOMIYA AND SUZUKI: SLOTTED ALOHA MOBILE PACKET COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

955

Takeshi Shinomiya was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1974. He received the B.E. degree in computer science and the M.E. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, in 1997 and 1999, respectively. Since 1999, he has been with Canon, Inc., Japan. His research interest is digital signal processing.

Hiroshi Suzuki (M78) was born in Tokyo, Japan, on October 4, 1949. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering, the M.S. degree in physical electronics, and the Dr. Eng. degree in electrical and electronics engineering, all from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, in 1972, 1974, and 1986, respectively. He joined the Electrical Communication Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), Japan, in 1974. He was engaged in research on devices in millimeter-wave regions. Since 1978, he has been engaged in fundamental and developmental research on digital mobile communication systems. He was an Executive Research Engineer in the Research and Development Department, NTT Mobile Communications Network, Inc. (NTT DoCoMo), from 1992 to 1996. Since September 1996, he has been a Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is currently interested in various applications of the adaptive signal processing to radio signaling: adaptive arrays, multiuser detection, and interference canceling for future advanced multiple-access communication systems. Dr. Suzuki is a Member of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan. He received the Paper Award from the IEICE in 1995. He is now the Chairman of the Radio Communication Systems (RCS) Technical Group of the Communications Society of IEICE.