Geographic Protocol Information and Capacity Deficit in Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Overheads incurred by network protocols diminish the capacity available for relaying useful data in a dynamic communications network. Discovering lower bounds on the amount of protocol overhead incurred is important for the development of efficient network protocols and for characterizing the effective capacity available for network users. This paper presents an information-theoretic framework for characterizing the minimum protocol overheads incurred for maintaining location information in a network with mobile nodes. Specifically, the minimum overhead problem is formulated as a rate-distortion problem. The formulation may be applied to networks with arbitrary traffic arrival and location service schemes. Lower bounds are derived for the minimum overheads incurred for maintaining the location of the nodes and consistent neighborhood information in terms of node mobility and packet arrival processes. This leads to a characterization of the deficit caused by the protocol overheads on the overall transport capacity.