Throughput Scaling Laws for Wireless Networks With Fading Channels

• Published in: IEEE transactions on information theory 2007-11, Vol.53 (11), p.4250-4254
• Main Authors: Ebrahimi, M., Maddah-Ali, M.A., Khandani, A.K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Channels; Communication channels; Decentralized link activation; Exact sciences and technology; Fading; fading channel; Information analysis; Information theory; Information, signal and communications theory; Links; Lower bounds; Network topology; Networks; Radiocommunications; Random variables; Rayleigh channels; scaling law; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Throughput; Transmission and modulation (techniques and equipments); Transmitters; Transmitters. Receivers; Upper bound; Upper bounds; Wireless communication; wireless network; Wireless networks
• ISSN: 0018-9448; 1557-9654
• DOI: 10.1109/TIT.2007.907518

A network of n communication links, operating over a shared wireless channel, is considered. Fading is assumed to be the dominant factor affecting the strength of the channels between transmitter and receiver terminals. It is assumed that each link can be active and transmit with a constant power P or remain silent. The objective is to maximize the throughput over the selection of active links. By deriving an upper bound and a lower bound, it is shown that in the case of Rayleigh fading: (i) the maximum throughput scales like log n; (ii) the maximum throughput is achievable in a distributed fashion. The upper bound is obtained using probabilistic methods, where the key point is to upper bound the throughput of any random set of active links by a chi-squared random variable. To obtain the lower bound, a decentralized link activation strategy is proposed and analyzed.