Throughput Anonymity Trade-off in Wireless Networks under Latency Constraints

Providing anonymity to routes in a wireless ad hoc network from passive eavesdroppers is considered. Using Shannon's equivocation as an information theoretic measure of anonymity, scheduling strategies are designed for wireless nodes using receiver directed signaling. The achievable rate region for multiaccess relays are characterized under constraints on average packet latency. The relationship between overall network throughput and the route anonymity is obtained by drawing a connection to the rate-distortion tradeoff in information theory. A decentralized implementation of the relaying strategy is proposed, and the corresponding performance analyzed.