Medium access control-physical cross-layer design

Different aspects of MAC-PHY cross-layer designs are reviewed to introduce pertinent queuing and stability analysis tools to the SP-oriented readership, and illustrate the advantages of such cross-layer designs using the recently introduced class of xNDMA protocols as an example. Queuing analysis shows that a jointly designed MAC-PHY layer provides increased throughput and low delay characteristics over a wide range of offerred loads. The throughput-delay benefits of xNDMA come at the expense of a moderate increase in receiver complexity and power consumption.