Scaling Laws for Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks: An Information Theoretic Approach

The advent of ad hoc wireless networks demands fundamental understanding about what they can provide in the way of information transfer as well as what the appropriate architectures are for operating them. Scaling Laws for Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks: An Information Theoretic Approach addresses these questions by presenting various models and results that quantify how their information hauling capacity scales with the number of nodes in the network, and also sheds light on high level architecture design for information transport. It begins by studying wireless networks operating under current technology that spatio-temporally schedules transmissions to alleviate interference, and routes packets in a multi-hop fashion. The second half studies wireless networks from a Shannon information-theoretic point of view, allowing any causal operation and more sophisticated modes of nodal cooperation and information transfer over the shared wireless medium. The constructive procedures for obtaining the sharp lower bounds yield insight into order optimal architecture for wireless networks, while the upper bounds provide guidance to designers in assessing how much and how far information can be transported. Scaling Laws for Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks: An Information Theoretic Approach is an invaluable resource for every network engineer or researcher designing or building ad hoc wireless networks.