On the Spectral Efficiency of Links with Multi-antenna Receivers in Non-homogenous Wireless Networks

TL;DR

This paper develops an asymptotic analysis technique to evaluate spectral efficiency in non-homogeneous wireless networks with multi-antenna receivers, revealing how antenna scaling impacts performance in various network density regimes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel asymptotic method for analyzing spectral efficiency in non-homogeneous networks with multiple antennas, extending understanding beyond homogeneous cases.

Findings

Spectral efficiency converges to asymptotic limits as the number of antennas increases.

Dense clusters allow SINR to grow faster than in homogeneous networks.

Maintaining constant spectral efficiency may require exponential growth of antennas in certain regimes.

Abstract

An asymptotic technique is developed to find the Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise-Ratio (SINR) and spectral efficiency of a link with N receiver antennas in wireless networks with non-homogeneous distributions of nodes. It is found that with appropriate normalization, the SINR and spectral efficiency converge with probability 1 to asymptotic limits as N increases. This technique is applied to networks with power-law node intensities, which includes homogeneous networks as a special case, to find a simple approximation for the spectral efficiency. It is found that for receivers in dense clusters, the SINR grows with N at rates higher than that of homogeneous networks and that constant spectral efficiencies can be maintained if the ratio of N to node density is constant. This result also enables the analysis of a new scaling regime where the distribution of nodes in the network flattens rather than increases uniformly. It is found that in many cases in this regime, N needs to grow approximately exponentially to maintain a constant spectral efficiency. In addition to strengthening previously known results for homogeneous networks, these results provide insight into the benefit of using antenna arrays in non-homogeneous wireless networks, for which few results are available in the literature.