Random Access Transport Capacity

J.G. Andrews (1) , Sébastien J. Weber (2) , Marios Kountouris (3) , M. Haenggi (4)

1 University of Texas at Austin [Austin]
2 Drexel University
3 E3S - Supélec Sciences des Systèmes
4 UND - University of Notre Dame [Indiana]

We develop a new metric for quantifying end-to-end throughput in multihop wireless networks, which we term random access transport capacity, since the interference model presumes uncoordinated transmissions. The metric quantifies the average maximum rate of successful end-to-end transmissions, multiplied by the communication distance, and normalized by the network area. We show that a simple upper bound on this quantity is computable in closed-form in terms of key network parameters when the number of retransmissions is not restricted and the hops are assumed to be equally spaced on a line between the source and destination. We also derive the optimum number of hops and optimal per hop success probability and show that our result follows the well-known square root scaling law while providing exact expressions for the preconstants, which contain most of the design-relevant network parameters. Numerical results demonstrate that the upper bound is accurate for the purpose of determining the optimal hop count and success (or outage) probability.

Domaines: Théorie de l'information et codage [math.IT]; Théorie de l'information [cs.IT]

J.G. Andrews, Sébastien J. Weber, Marios Kountouris, M. Haenggi. Random Access Transport Capacity. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2010, 9 (6), pp.2101-2111. ⟨10.1109/TWC.2010.06.091432⟩. ⟨hal-00527558⟩