Throughput and Delay Analysis of Wireless Random Access Networks

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the throughput and delay in multihop wireless random access networks using a Markov renewal model, highlighting the importance of source-destination distance distribution and proposing traffic management strategies.

Contribution

It establishes conditions for scalable throughput based on SD-distance distribution and links delay performance to queueing and SD-distance, offering practical traffic control methods.

Findings

Necessary and sufficient conditions for scalable throughput

Delay characterized by queueing behavior and SD-distance

Traffic scaling laws for network scalability

Abstract

This paper studies the network throughput and transport delay of a multihop wireless random access network based on a Markov renewal model of packet transportation. We show that the distribution of the source-to-destination (SD) distance plays a critical role in characterizing network performance. We establish necessary and sufficient condition on the SD distance for scalable network throughput, and address the optimal rate allocation issue with fairness and the QoS requirements taken into consideration. In respect to the end-to-end performance, the transport delay is explored in this paper along with network throughput. We characterize the transport delay by relating it to nodal queueing behavior and the SD-distance distribution; the former is a local property while the latter is a global property. In addition, we apply the large deviation theory to derive the tail distribution of transport delay. To put our theory into practical network operation, several traffic scaling laws are provided to demonstrate how network scalability can be achieved by localizing the traffic pattern, and a leaky bucket scheme at the network access is proposed for traffic shaping and flow control.