Capacity of Wireless Networks With Directed Energy Links in the Presence of Obstacles

In this paper, we study the capacity of wireless networks with directed energy (DE) links in the presence of obstacles. DE links are highly focused wireless links that can be treated as “pencil beam,” an example of which is the E-band link (71-76 and 81-86 GHz) newly made available by the FCC. The 10-GHz spectrum of E-band is 50-times that of the entire cellular spectrum and provides the much needed spectrum in today's world of exponential growth in mobile applications. Since the performance of highly focused DE links are highly susceptible to the presence of obstacles and real-world applications typically involve obstacles, it is important to study the capacity of wireless networks with DE links in the presence of obstacles, which is the subject of this paper. In the following, we first provide a study of probability distribution of DE links in the presence of obstacles and investigate how the number, shape, and size of obstacles impact the DE link probability distribution. Then, based on the probability distribution of DE links, we derive the capacity scaling laws for wireless networks in the presence of obstacles. Furthermore, our results can be extended to obstacles with arbitrary shapes quite accurately.