Self-organizing packet radio ad hoc networks with overlay (SOPRANO)

The SOPRANO project involves a novel adaptive and scalable wireless network architecture utilizing a mixture of cellular and multihop packet radio system topologies with the potential to support a variety of applications including high-data rate Internet and multimedia traffic at a reasonable degree of implementation complexity. This article discusses the potential benefits of this structure and addresses several relevant issues necessary to support such a network. More specifically, it focuses on connection establishment and self-organization, investigates the formulation of an optimum transmission strategy, and examines some of the techniques by which we can augment the capacity or enhance the system performance in this multihop network. We also present capacity bounds that illustrate how these techniques help in trading off conserved power for a multifold capacity advantage.