ABSTRACT

Geometric Analysis of Large Wireless Networks:
Interference, Outage, and Delay

Martin Haenggi, University of Notre Dame

Abstract:
Large wireless systems, in particular ad hoc and sensor networks, have great potential for numerous applications. They have been the subject of intense investigation over the last decade. Despite these efforts, many of their fundamental properties are still not well understood, and it is unknown how to design network protocols in an optimum fashion. Important progress has been made in determining the capacity scaling behavior of these systems, but the asymptotic nature of these results severely restricts their applicability to practical networks. This project complements such scaling studies by aiming at a precise characterization of certain performance metrics, including reliability and delay.
Further, some of the standard modeling assumptions, such as the uniformly random node distribution are questioned, and existing results are extended to other node distributions that better reflect real networks with interacting nodes.

The investigators use a rigorous analytic approach that combines tools from stochastic geometry, point process theory, branching processes, and information theory. Since the network geometry critically affects the interference and signal-to-noise-ratios, an emphasis is put on the geometric properties of the underlying node distribution. The project focuses on several concrete problems in interference characterization, link outage, and the tradeoff between end-to-end delay and outage in large networks with randomly distributed nodes. The objectives are to analytically determine or bound these quantities for general node distributions and to derive guidelines for protocol design from the theoretical insight gained.

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