Extending the capacity of ad hoc networks beyond network coding

Abstract

The protocols used in ad hoc networks today are based on the assumption that the best way to approach multiple access interference (MAI) is to avoid it. Unfortunately, as the seminal work by Gupta and Kumar has shown, this approach does not scale. We demonstrate that protocol architectures that exploit multi-packet reception (MPR) do increase the order of the transport capacity of random wireless ad hoc networks for multi-pair unicast applications by a factor of Θ(log n) and Θ(log (log n)) under the protocol and physical models, respectively, where n is the number of nodes in the network. By contrast, Liu, Goeckel, and Towsley have shown that network coding (NC) does not increase the order capacity of wireless ad hoc networks under the protocol and physical models.