Analyzing the capacity of wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper we develop analytical closed form expression for the capacity of a wireless ad hoc network. First, for the general case when nodes can adapt their communication rates to the link quality, a proper formulation for the total network capacity is presented based on the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the signal to interference power ratio (SIR). Then, a closed form expression for this CDF is analytically derived. This closed form is further studied by fitting it to a normal distribution. Afterwards, the capacity of the network is investigated. By examining the effect of the outage threshold, it is shown that in order to obtain a higher capacity, one may use simple non-adaptive transceivers with higher threshold on the received SIR. These results are obtained by conducting analytical and simulation studies.