Impact of network structure on the capacity of wireless multihop ad hoc communication

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the structure of wireless multihop ad hoc networks influences their capacity, revealing that network topology critically affects throughput and scaling laws, with implications for decentralized network design.

Contribution

It introduces models of network structures based on transmission power, analyzes their impact on throughput capacity, and highlights the critical role of network topology in performance scaling.

Findings

Throughput capacity varies significantly with network structure.

Critical nodes heavily influence overall network performance.

Scaling laws depend on the underlying topology.

Abstract

As a representative of a complex technological system, so-called wireless multihop ad hoc communication networks are discussed. They represent an infrastructure-less generalization of todays wireless cellular phone networks. Lacking a central control authority, the ad hoc nodes have to coordinate themselves such that the overall network performs in an optimal way. A performance indicator is the end-to-end throughput capacity. Various models, generating differing ad hoc network structure via differing transmission power assignments, are constructed and characterized. They serve as input for a generic data traffic simulation as well as some semi-analytic estimations. The latter reveal that due to the most-critical-node effect the end-to-end throughput capacity sensitively depends on the underlying network structure, resulting in differing scaling laws with respect to network size.