On the Performance of Large-Scale Wireless Networks in the Finite Block-Length Regime

TL;DR

This paper develops a realistic model for large-scale wireless networks operating with short codewords, providing accurate performance metrics that improve upon classical infinite blocklength approximations, crucial for ultra-reliable low-latency communications.

Contribution

It derives an average coding rate and outage probability bounds for finite blocklength regimes in large networks using stochastic geometry, offering more accurate performance evaluation tools.

Findings

Classical models overestimate network performance with short codewords.

Derived bounds closely match simulation results, validating the approach.

Finite blocklength effects significantly impact network reliability metrics.

Abstract

Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications have stringent delay constraints, and hence use codes with small block length (short codewords). In these cases, classical models that provide good approximations to systems with infinitely long codewords become imprecise. To remedy this, in this paper, an average coding rate expression is derived for a large scale network with short codewords using stochastic geometry and the theory of coding in the finite blocklength regime. The average coding rate and upper and lower bounds on the outage probability of the large-scale network are derived, and a tight approximation of the outage probability is presented. Then, simulations are presented to study the effect of network parameters on the average coding rate and the outage probability of the network, which demonstrate that results in the literature derived for the infinite blocklength regime overestimate the network performance, whereas the results in this paper provide a more realistic performance evaluation.