Throughput of Large Wireless Networks on Square, Hexagonal and Triangular Grids

Capacity analysis of sensor networks or wireless ad hoc networks has attracted a great attention in the past years. But the research in this area has primarily focused on scaling laws of arbitrary or random network instead of the exact capacity of given topologies. While the insight into how the capacity of an arbitrary or random network scales with the number of nodes in a given area is impor-tant, the exact capacity of a network depends on the network topol-ogy and can be more desirable in practice. In this paper, we com-pare the throughput of a large network with three possible topolo-gies: square (rectangular), hexagonal and triangular. With a given topology, the network throughput also depends on the choice of routing protocols. We follow a synchronous array method (SAM) that is known so far to yield the highest throughout of a network on a rectangular grid. 1