Analysis of Capture Probability Performance Techniques for

Wireless LAN
Julie Y. H. Zhao and Okechukwu C. Ugweje Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The University of Akron Akron, OH 44325-3904
Abstract - The ability of a receiver to capture the intended signal in the presence of interference can improve the throughput of random multiple access prctocols in wireless LAN (W-LAN) applications. In this paper, we investigate the various methods of evaluating capture probability. We are concerned with the performance of a number of users in a W-LAN infrastructure attempting to send data packets over a commonly shared carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) channel to a central access point (AP). The probability of capture when fading and multipath are present is analyzed and compared. The system performance in the presence of multipath fading is evaluated.
used in modeling the received power level. It is noted - [4] do that most of the analysis in the literature [l] not account for multipath. This may be true in some siyuations but will not be accurate for all cases. It is also noted that the method used depends on whether the physical layer of the system or the data-link la.yer of the system is considered. For each layer, different models have been developed depending on the channel model and the capture model. In this paper, we present a study on the various methods of evaluating capture probability. The SyStem performance in the presence of multipath fachg is evaluated. We focus on the performance of a (:entral AP in a radio LAN system, in which a number of terminals transmit over a common channel to the AP. We will consider both power controlled and :non power controlled cases. Unlike [l]- [4], the effect of multipath representing a more realistic model of the channel is considered in our computation. Numerical results are shown in terms of capture probability as a function of the number of mobile terminals, distribution of mobile terminals in the basic service a'rea, and the distribution function. Only a representative number of plots are shown due to space limitations. In Section 2, the system description necessary to present the subsequent materials is presented. This is followed in Section 3 by the capture effect and the capture probability techniques. This includes a description of four methods of computing the capture effect. Numerical results and discussions are then presented in Section 4.

Introduction

In recently years, there has been increasing interest in

wireless and portable communication systems, such as in wireless local area networks (W-LANs). The emergence of W-LAN which uses both medium access control (MAC) layer and physical (PHY) layer, brings the benefits of mobility and flexibility to users. Wireless LAN can provide all the functionality of wired LAN. The large changes in received signal power caused by attenuation and multipath posses a problem for the successful reception and decoding of data packets by the receiver. In W-LAN, packet collisions occurring in distrib uted multiple access protocols can degrade system perh i s is exacerbated by multipath propagaformance. T tion (or shadowing),near-far effect and hidden terminal problems, and more, which afect the probability of capture. However, it is possible to increase the system throughput by using the capture effect to reduce these degradations. The ability of a receiver to capture the intended signal in the presence of interference can improve syse s e a r c h on capture effect has been tem throughput. R made for the mobile packet radio channels over the - [4]. Ftayleigh, Ricean and log-normal past years [l] distributions and their combinations are commody

System Description

A typical configuration of a W-LAN is shown in Fig;. 1. The system consist of several mobile terminals (M:Ts) associated to an access point (AP),which is directly connected to a wired network. The MTs communicate to the backbone through the AP within a given basic service set (BSS). A single AP can function within a range of a few hundred meters [7]. The activ;ities of the MTs are controlled by a coordination function

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that determines when a station can transmit over the wireless channel. The medium access control (MAC) protocol used in W-LAN is based on the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) 151.

Many methods are used to evaluate this probability. The method used depends on whether the physical layer or the data-link layer of the system is considered. Scanning the literature, the two major classes of capture probability modeling is identified [6]. A Models focusing on the Physical Layer: These models are based on "capture ratio", only and the bit error of the signal is not considered. Only the received signal power levels are considered a s the criterion for capture [l]- [2]. In this case, the packet with the strongest power captures the AP. Hence, the probability of capture is based solely on the capture ratio.

Fig. 1. A wireless local area network topology Since the area of the service set is usually small as in micro or pic0 cell size and the mobility is limited to walking speed, the characteristics of the channel become different from the traditional land mobile network. Most of the W-LAN systems are used in indoors environment or short distance outdoor environment such as a college campus, a hospital or a factory. In some cases, the direct lineof-sight (LOS) signal is small compared to the reflected signal power. Therefore, it is assumed that the dominant effect is characterized by Rayleigh fading although Rayleigh fading does not account for the cases when the MT has a direct line of sight with the AI? Some models use the Rician pdf may be more appropriate. In this paper, we used the Rayleigh channel model for simplicity.

B Models focusing at the MAC Layer: In addition to considering the power level of signal, this model is based on the assumption that the receiver has perfect synchronization. That is, the receiver can capture only one signal belonging to the desired MT and reject signals from the interfering packets.

Capture Probability

In this section, we characterize different methods of

computing the capture probability the probability of capture. For the subsequent sections, we define the following variables:

4 . 1 Method 1
This method assumes that a packet will be successfully received without bit error if the power of the desired packet PO, exceeds the power of the n interfering packets by at least a capture ratio z [l] - [2]. The parameter z may be regarded as the minimum signal-teinterference ratio needed for successful recep tion. During the capture period, the received power is considered constant [SI. This condition capture is expr-d as - PI,

Capture Effect

A packet collision occurs when two or more packets happen to be transmitted at about the same time. Collisions of packets may result to loss of data. In W-LAN systems, capture effect refers to the ability of an AP to successfully decode a packet despite the simultaneous presence of other signals. Capture probability Pcap(N), is the probability that any one of the N + 1 packets arriving in any time slot is correctly decoded. Understanding the capture effect can help mitigate the probability of collisions and hence improve the network performance. Successful capture depends upon the received power level, the type of modulation, characteristicsof the channel and the r e bustness of receiver synchronization [3]. In this paper, it is assumed that a l l MTs have the same transmission power. Since packets are generated at Merent distance from the AP, their receive powers will not be the same (near-far effect).

P I

where Q is the power of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), x is the term in the parenthesis, and z is the caption ratio. It is of no consequence to ignore the effect of noise since the channel is interference limited. The parameter z is a probabilistic event and has no clear physical explanation sigmfies that bigger value implies higher Probability of the desired packet being co&ectly received. Ignoring the effect i f noise, the

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condition for capture becomes Po

>z

i=l

c Pi.
Hence

fR(r) =

{0

2T

OsTSl
otherwise

The probability of successfully receiving a message is then given by [6]- [2]

f&i)

J," 2rirf exp(-pirf)dri

= 2

s r rfcle-Ps'bdri

(5)

where we have assumed that The capture probability is then given by

F i =rip.

4.2
= (n + l)
0

= (n + 1)

5 f P ( p o ) [Fp, (p)] dpo

f h o ) Pr P O>
i=l

Method 2

pi} dpo

(4)

Capture occurs if and only if the power of the desired packet is greater than each of the powers of the N joint interfering packets by a factor z [l]. This condition can be expressed as,
PO > zmax(pl...pi---pN) .

where f,(po) is the pdf of the instantaneous received power po from the desired terminal, fp, (pz) is the pdf of the sum of all n interference signals power, and Fp, (px)is the cdf of the convolution of n instantaneous pdfs. Depending on the channel model, the expression derived for (4) will be different.
. r

implies that

For Rayleigh fading channel

f h i )

fP,(PX)

1 1 =-exp(-=pi) Pi Pi 1 !"P;-' = (n - 1) P,
=

Thus, for the desired packet at the distance ro,we obtain

1 =P(-rPi) Pi

Pr(roIN) =

J : O rp =P(-POTE)

X J;2~1(l-exp(-%f)drl]~ dpd7) and the cdf can be obtained by Laplace transformation. A similar expression have been obtained for the Therefore, the unconditional capture probability beRician fading chamel model (see [6], [2]). comes

Generally, the exact location of each terminal is not known. Since the distance R from the MT to the AP is random, a l l packets are received with different power. This will facilitate the modeling of the near-far effect. In this case, the pdf of the average power is related to the spatial distribution, power attenuation and the distance. To get the pdf, we average the respective pdf over the pdf of the spatial distribution such that for the Rayleigh channel we have
COO

4.3

Method 3

This models focusing on the MAC layer: These models address the bit decision process under interfering packets and noise, and relates to the modulation scheme. The models assumes that the receiver randomly selects a favorite one from the N interfering packets [3] - [4]. In this case, capture occurs if and only if the AP locks to the test packet and the detected bit sequence is identical to the bit sequence of the test packet. The capture probability condition is [l], [3]
Pr(r0) = [l-

where ~ R ( T is ) the spatial distribution of the distance R between the MT and the AP. Several spatial distributions are possible as indicated in [6]. For the special case of uniform spatial distribution over a unit circle centered at the AP, the pdf of the distance R is given

%IL,
2%

(9)

where L is the number of bits i n the packet and is the probability of bit error. To use this method one has to take into consideration the receiver decoding process.

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b is the bit error probaAt a common AP receiver, the bit error probability where L is the packet size, P for a receiver locked to the desired signal is given by bility, which is only considered for BPSK, f(po) is the pdf of the wanted signal power PO, and Fp, (PZ) is the [GI cdf of the convolution of n instantaneous pdfs.

Numerical Results

where T b is the bit period, NO is the singlesided noise spectral density and jjZis the local-mean power of the joint interference signal. The capture probability is [GI Pr(yo) =

s, fF,

@ Z )

1:

fP0

(Po)
(11)

x [I - % ( P O ) ] L & % @ ~ ,

for L representing the number of bits in the packet, is N-fold convolution of mean power of the and fFz EZ) interference signals. In [l], [6], the spatial distribution is considered as Quasi-Uniform distribution, with
fR(T) = 2Texp(-34)

In a l l the plots, the following parameters are assumed: U) the loss factor 0 = 2. b) the effect of noise is ignored.In Fig. 2, the capture probability for the desired signal is plotted for method l with z = 4. It can be seen that distance is a major factor that determines the received signal power, and it raises a fairness isI may sue since the terminal furthest away from the A never be able communication in a fading or highly mobile environment. When a terminal is far away from the Ap,the capture effect decrease considerably.

fF&)

= 3232exp(-3

(12)

In this paper, with the uniform spatial distribution, the capture probability may be written as (check, I did it by myself, in the book quasi-uniform)

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.o

Distance r

4.4

Method 4

Fig. 2: Capture probability vs. distance of the MT Fig. 3 shows the capture probability for the number of terminals for different values of %.The number of users plays an important role in determining the performance. For a large number of users, the performance of capture effect decreases sigdcantly. One can observe that an increase of successful capture probability occurs when z decreases. Lower values of z means more powerful receiver detection probability. On the other hand, the increasing transmitting power should be limited due to the power control and battery requirement. The lengths of packets is another factor of c a p ture probability, as shown in Fig. 4. It presents the capture probability under both uniform and quasiuniform spatial distribution. Shorter packets might be captured successfully, while longer packets have a higher probability of being lost due to channel fading.

Models focusing at both the MAC layer and the Physical layer: This model combines the two method, A1 and B. Capture effect occurs when the receiver, AP, locks its carrier onto the strongest signal, which is the wanted packet and the detected bit sequence is identic a l to the bit sequence of the wanted packet [3]. That means successful capture happens if and only if the strongest signal is detected without bit error or with the limited bit error. This process is affected by both interfering signals and AWGN. Thus, we have [3]

Pap

= (n+l) Pr {succesllock}Pr {lock}

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2 z = 6 db tMethod 2 2 = 10 db
2 - Method

environment. We observed that there is no significate difference between those methods. For a l l models, we noticed however, that the system performance is sensitive to the number of interfering packages and the distance between the AP and the MTs.

E 0.3 n
&Method 2 z = 6 dB +Method 3 Quasi-Uniform Distribution 3 Uniform Distribution +Method --zt Method 4 SNR = 6 dB

_.I

10

The Number of Colliding Packets n

Fig. 3: Capture probability vs. the number of colliding packets

2
4

The number of Colliding Packets n

3
r

&?

-Uniform distribution n = 2 c Quasi-Uniform distribution n = 1 Quasi-Uniform distribution n = 2

Fig. 5: Comparison of capture effect methods

0.6

References
L

4 0.2
0 . 0
25

50

------+
*
*

[l] C. T. Lau and C. h u n g , Capture models for mobile packet radio networks, IEEE Trans. Commun., pp. 917 - 925, vol. 40, no. 5, May 1992.

[2] J. Sanchez and D. R. Smith, Capture effect in

Rician fading channels with application to slotted ALOHA, Global Tele. Conf. - Globecom99, pp.

75

100

125

The Bits of a Packet L

2390 - 2394. [3] W. Ren and M. Sweeting, Evaluation models of capture probability for coherent BPSK and noncoherent BFSK demodulation, IEEE Veh.. lechnol. Conf., pp. 1805 - 1809, 1999.

Fig. 4 Capture probability vs. packet length

Comparing these four methods, we can see every model shows the system capture probability is sensi- [4] W. Ren, J. Ward, S. Hodgart and M. Sweeting, tive to the number of the colliding packets. When Exact evaluation of capture effect under NCI?SK more terminals transmit packets at the same time, demodulation,IEE Proc.-Commun, pp. 100 -104, the capture effect decreases. But there is difference vol. 148, no. 2, April 2001. between those models: Method 3 shows lowest performance comparing with others, while method 2 has [5] WirelessLAN systems - technology and specitications, White Paper, NDC Communications, hc., highest probability under the same condition. There MKT-04-002-9802, 1998. is no big difference between method 1 and method 4. [6] J. P. Linnartz, Narrowband Land-Mobile Radio Networks, Artech House 1993.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have presented four methods of modeling capture probability in a wireless communication

[7] Benny Bing, High-speed Wireless A T M and LANs, Artech House 2000.

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