On the Capacity of the Single Source Multiple Relay Single Destination Mesh Network

TL;DR

This paper derives the asymptotic capacity of a single source, multiple relay, single destination mesh network using information theory, showing that the compress-and-forward strategy approaches capacity even with finite relay power.

Contribution

It provides the first capacity characterization of the SSMRSD mesh network and demonstrates the effectiveness of the compress-and-forward strategy in this context.

Findings

Asymptotic capacity is achievable with infinite relay power.

Compress-and-forward strategy approaches capacity with finite relay power.

Relays significantly enhance network cooperation and efficiency.

Abstract

In this paper, we derive the information theoretic capacity of a special class of mesh networks. A mesh network is a heterogeneous wireless network in which the transmission among power limited nodes is assisted by powerful relays, which use the same wireless medium. We investigate the mesh network when there is one source, one destination, and multiple relays, which we call the single source multiple relay single destination (SSMRSD) mesh network. We derive the asymptotic capacity of the SSMRSD mesh network when the relay powers grow to infinity. Our approach is as follows. We first look at an upper bound on the information theoretic capacity of these networks in a Gaussian setting. We then show that this bound is achievable asymptotically using the compress-and-forward strategy for the multiple relay channel. We also perform numerical computations for the case when the relays have finite powers. We observe that even when the relay power is only a few times larger than the source power, the compress-and-forward rate gets close to the capacity. The results indicate the value of cooperation in wireless mesh networks. The capacity characterization quantifies how the relays can cooperate, using the compress-and-forward strategy, to either conserve node energy or to increase transmission rate.