On the (n, m, k)-cast capacity of wireless ad hoc networks

The capacity of wireless ad-hoc networks is analyzed for all kinds of information dissemination based on single and multiple packet reception schemes under the physical model. To represent the general information dissemination scheme, we use (n, m, k)-cast model [1] where n, to, and k (k ≤ m) are the number of nodes, destinations and closest destinations that actually receive packets from the source in each (n, m, k)-cast group, respectively. We first consider point-to-point communication, which implies single packet reception between transmitter-receiver pairs and compute the (n, m, k)-cast communications. Next, the achievable throughput capacity is computed when receiver nodes are endowed with multipacket reception (MPR) capability. We adopt maximum likelihood decoding (MLD) and successive interference cancellation as optimal and suboptimal decoding schemes for MPR. We also demonstrate that physical and protocol models for MPR render the same capacity when we utilize MLD for decoding.