Throughput performance of multiple independent paths in wireless multihop network

We investigate the improvement in throughput performance achievable by multiple independent paths in a single-channel wireless multi-hop network. We show that a major limiting factor in multiple path routing is the degree of spatial reuse that can be achieved at the source node; that is, the maximum achievable throughput improvement of multiple paths is determined by the achievable degree of spatial reuse rather than the number of paths used. Hence having more than 2 paths does not significantly improve the performance. We also show that the average throughput improvement resulting from 2 independent paths depends on the probability of finding such independent paths in the network; this probability, although increasing with node density, is not always large enough to guarantee significant improvement in throughput.