Multicast Capacity in Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Network with Infrastructure Support

Abstract—We study the multicast capacity under a network model featuring both node’s mobility and infrastructure support. Combinations between mobility and infrastructure, as well as multicast transmission and infrastructure, have already been shown effective ways to increase capacity. In this work, we jointly consider the impact of the above three factors on network capacity. We assume that m static base stations and n mobile users are placed in an ad hoc network, of which the area scales with n as f2(n). A general mobility model is adopted, such that each user moves within a bounded distance from its home-point with an arbitrary pattern. In addition, each mobile node serves as the source of a multicast transmission, which results in a total number of n multicast transmissions. We focus on the situations that base stations actually benefit the capacity, and prove that multicast capacity of mobile hybrid network falls into three regimes. For each regime, matching upper and lower bounds are derived. Index Terms—Multicast capacity; mobility; hybrid networks; MANETs; I