Throughput scaling in wireless networks with restricted mobility

We study throughput scaling in an ad-hoc wireless network where the communication domain is divided into overlapping neighborhoods and n mobile nodes are restricted to move within their assigned neighborhood. In our model, when a node is located in a region not shared with any other neighborhood, it transmits to nodes of its own neighborhood only; when it is in an area that overlaps with another neighborhood, it transmits to nodes of the overlapping neighborhood. Communication between source-destination pairs is subject to interference from other nodes. By adopting a deterministic approach, we obtain an achievable throughput which is a function of properties of the node locations and neighborhood dimensions. As special cases of our neighborhood model, the results of P. Gupta and P.R. Kumar (2000) and M. Grossglauser and D. Tse (2002) can be recovered. We then study the case of random placement of nodes with n^alpha neighborhoods, where 0 les alpha les 1, and achieve a throughput of Omega (n^1-alpha/2). Hence our model captures every order of growth for the throughput, encompassing the results from both P. Gupta and P.R. Kumar (2000) and M. Grossglauser and D. Tse (2002) as extreme situations