Research Article Throughput Analysis of Large Wireless Networks with Regular Topologies

The throughput of large wireless networks with regular topologies is analyzed under two medium-access control schemes: syn-chronous array method (SAM) and slotted ALOHA. The regular topologies considered are square, hexagon, and triangle. Both nonfading channels and Rayleigh fading channels are examined. Furthermore, both omnidirectional antennas and directional an-tennas are considered. Our analysis shows that the SAM leads to a much higher network throughput than the slotted ALOHA. The network throughput in this paper is measured in either bits-hops per second per Hertz per node or bits-meters per second per Hertz per node. The exact connection between the two measures is shown for each topology. With these two fundamental units, the network throughput shown in this paper can serve as a reliable benchmark for future works on network throughput of large networks. Copyright © 2007 K. Hong and Y. Hua. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1