We consider the problem of determining rates of growth for the maximum stable throughput achievable in dense wireless networks. We formulate this problem as one of finding maximum flows on random unit-disk graphs. Equipped with the max-flow/min-cut theorem as our basic analysis tool, we obtain rates of growth under three models of communication: (a) omnidirectional transmissions; (b) "simple" directional transmissions, in which sending nodes generate a single beam aimed at a particular receiver; and (c) "complex " directional transmissions, in which sending nodes generate multiple beams aimed at multiple receivers. Our main finding is that an increase of 54 54 in maximum stable throughput is all that can be achieved by allowing arbitrarily complex signal processing (in the form of generation of directed beams) at the transmitters and receivers. We conclude therefore that neither directional antennas, nor the ability to communicate simultaneously with multiple nodes, can be expected in practice to effectively circumvent the constriction on capacity in dense networks that results from the geometric layout of nodes in space.

Cross-layer design breaks away from traditional network design where each layer of the protocol stack operates independently. We explore the potential synergies of exchanging information between different layers to support real-time video streaming. In this new approach information is exchanged between different layers of the protocol stack, and end-to-end performance is optimized by adapting to this information at each protocol layer. We discuss key parameters used in the cross-layer information exchange along with the associated cross-layer adaptation. Substantial performance gains through this cross-layer design are demonstrated for video streaming. 1.

Due to environmental concerns and strict constraints on interference imposed on other networks, the radiated power of emerging pervasive wireless networks needs to be strictly limited, yet without sacrificing acceptable data rates. Pulsed Time-Hopping Ultra-Wide Band (TH-UWB) is a radio technology that has the potential to satisfy this requirement. Although TH-UWB is a multi-user radio technology, non-zero cross-correlation between time-hopping sequences, time-asynchronicity between sources and a multipath channel environment make it sensitive to strong interferers and near-far scenarios. While most protocols manage interference and multiple-access through power control or mutual exclusion (CSMA/CA or TDMA), we base our design on rate control, a relatively unexplored dimension for multiple-access and interference management. We further take advantage of the nature of pulsed TH-UWB to propose an interference mitigation scheme that reduces the impact of strong interferers. A source is always allowed to send and continuously adapts its channel code (hence its rate) to the interference experienced at the destination. In contrast to power control or exclusion, our MAC layer is local to sender and receiver and does not need coordination among neighbors not involved in the transmission. We show by simulation that we achieve a significant increase in network throughput.

Abstract—This paper addresses three issues in the field of ad hoc network capacity: the impact of i) channel fading, ii) channel inversion power control, and iii) threshold–based scheduling on capacity. Channel inversion and threshold scheduling may be viewed as simple ways to exploit channel state information (CSI) without requiring cooperation across transmitters. We use the transmission capacity (TC) as our metric, defined as the maximum spatial intensity of successful simultaneous transmissions subject to a constraint on the outage probability (OP). By assuming the nodes are located on the infinite plane according to a Poisson process, we are able to employ tools from stochastic geometry to obtain asymptotically tight bounds on the distribution of the signal-to-interference (SIR) level, yielding in turn tight bounds on the OP (relative to a given SIR threshold) and the TC. We demonstrate that in the absence of CSI, fading can significantly reduce the TC and somewhat surprisingly, channel inversion only makes matters worse. We develop a threshold-based transmission rule where transmitters are active only if the channel to their receiver is acceptably strong, obtain expressions for the optimal threshold, and show that this simple, fully distributed scheme can significantly reduce the effect of fading. Index Terms—Ad hoc networks, channel inversion, fading, threshold scheduling, transmission capacity (TC). I.

Abstract—Ultra-wideband (UWB) transmission is an emerging wireless communication technology with unique potential merits such as high-rate, low-transmission power, immunity to multipath propagation, and capability in precise positioning. It has received significant interests for future wireless communications from both academia and industry. In UWB wireless networks, medium access control (MAC) is essential to coordinate the channel access among competing devices. The unique UWB characteristics not only pose significant challenges but also offer great opportunities in efficient UWB MAC design. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of UWB MAC development on four important aspects: multiple access, overhead reduction, resource allocation, and quality of service (QoS) provisioning, and identifies some future research issues. Index Terms—Medium access control (MAC), quality of service (QoS), resource allocation, ultra-wideband (UWB) transmission, wireless personal area network (WPAN). I.

A fundamental problem with unmanaged wireless networks is high packet loss rates and poor spatial reuse, especially with bursty traffic typical of normal use. To address these limitations, we explore the notion of interference cancellation for unmanaged networks — the ability for a single receiver to disambiguate and successfully receive simultaneous overlapping transmissions from multiple unsynchronized sources. We describe a practical algorithm for interference cancellation, and implement it for ZigBee using software radios. In this setting, we find that our techniques can reduce packet loss rate and substantially increase spatial reuse. With carrier sense set to prevent concurrent sends, our approach reduces the packet loss rate during collisions from 14 % to 8 % due to improved handling of hidden terminals. Conversely, disabling carrier sense reduces performance for only 7 % of all pairs of links and increases the delivery rate for the median pair of links in our testbed by a factor of 1.8 due to improved spatial reuse.

1 The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

In this paper, the effect of scheduling on the performance of CDMA wireless ad hoc networks is examined. In ad hoc networks, it is necessary to suppress transmissions by nodes around the desired receiver in order to achieve successful communication. This minimum separation, the guard zone, has important implications on carrier sensing and other MAC-level protocols. But previously, the guard zone has not been well understood. In this paper, the guard zone is investigated in CDMA ad hoc networks, with non-spread spectrum ad hoc networks being a special case where the spreading gain is unity. It is shown that the size of this exclusion zone has a large impact on the transmission capacity of ad hoc networks, and an optimal guard zone is found using stochastic geometry. These results provide useful insight in the design of contention resolution algorithms as compared to pure random access in ad hoc networks.

We are interested in finding a jointly optimal scheduling, routing and power control that achieves max-min fair rate allocation in a multi-hop wireless network. This is a highly complex non-convex optimization problem and it has been previously solved only for small networks. We restrict ourselves to symmetric networks with ring and line topologies, and we numerically solve the problem for a large number of nodes. We model pointto -point links as single user Gaussian channels where nodes cannot send and receive at the same time. This type of channel approximates the performance of CDMA networks and performs better than the equivalent 802.11 network.

Previous work on ad hoc network capacity has focused primarily on source-destination throughput requirements for different models and transmission scenarios, with an emphasis on delay tolerant applications. In such problems, network capacity enhancement is achieved as a tradeoff with transmission delay. In this paper, the capacity of ad hoc networks supporting delay sensitive traffic is studied. First, a general framework is proposed for for characterizing the interactions between the physical and the network layer in an ad hoc network. Then, CDMA ad hoc networks, in which advanced signal processing techniques such as multiuser detection are relied upon to enhance the user capacity, are analyzed.The network capacity is characterized using a combination of geometric arguments and large scale analysis, for several network scenar-ios, employing matched filters, decorrelators and minimum-mean-square-error receivers. Insight into the network performance for finite systems is also provided by means of simulations. Both analysis and simulations show a significant network capacity gain for ad hoc networks employing multiuser detectors, compared with those using matched filter receivers, as well as very good performance even under tight delay and transmission power requirements.