A deterministic approach to throughput scaling in wireless networks

• Published in: IEEE transactions on information theory Vol. 50; no. 6; pp. 1041 - 1049
• Main Authors: Kulkarni, S.R., Viswanath, P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2004; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Femtocell networks; Information theory; Intelligent networks; Interference; Mobile communication; Networks; Physical layer; Receivers; Scalability; Throughput; Traffic control; Transmitters; Very large scale integration; Wireless communication; Wireless networks
• ISSN: 0018-9448; 1557-9654
• DOI: 10.1109/TIT.2004.828055

We address the problem of how throughput in a wireless network scales as the number of users grows. Following the model of Gupta and Kumar, we consider n identical nodes placed in a fixed area. Pairs of transmitters and receivers wish to communicate but are subject to interference from other nodes. Throughput is measured in bit-meters per second. We provide a very elementary deterministic approach that gives achievability results in terms of three key properties of the node locations. As a special case, we obtain /spl Omega/(/spl radic/n) throughput for a general class of network configurations in a fixed area. Results for random node locations in a fixed area can also be derived as special cases of the general result by verifying the growth rate of three parameters. For example, as a simple corollary of our result we obtain a stronger (almost sure) version of the /spl radic/n//spl radic/(logn) throughput for random node locations in a fixed area obtained by Gupta and Kumar. Results for some other interesting non-independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) node distributions are also provided.