On outer bounds to the capacity region of wireless networks

Abstract — We study the capacity region of a general wireless network by deriving fundamental upper bounds on a class of linear functionals of the rate tuples at which joint reliable communication can take place. The widely studied transport capacity is a specific linear functional: the coefficient of the rate between a pair of nodes is equal to the Euclidean distance between them. The upper bound on the linear functionals of the capacity region is used to derive upper bounds to scaling laws for generalized transport capacity: the coefficient of the rate between a pair of nodes is equal to some arbitrary function of the Euclidean distance between them, for a class of minimum distance networks. This upper bound to the scaling law meets that achievable by multihop communication over these networks for a wide class of channel conditions; this shows the optimality, in the scaling-law sense, of multihop communication when studying generalized transport capacity of wireless networks. Index Terms — Ad-hoc wireless networks, capacity region, cutset bounds, isometric embedding, multi-hop, transport capacit