Throughput and Delay Scaling in Supportive Two-Tier Networks

Consider a wireless network that has two tiers with different priorities: a primary tier vs. a secondary tier, which is an emerging network scenario with the advancement of cognitive radio technologies. The primary tier consists of randomly distributed legacy nodes of density n, which have an absolute priority to access the spectrum. The secondary tier consists of randomly distributed cognitive nodes of density m=n^β with β≥ 2, which can only access the spectrum opportunistically to limit the interference to the primary tier. Based on the assumption that the secondary tier is allowed to route the packets for the primary tier, we investigate the throughput and delay scaling laws of the two tiers in the following two scenarios: (i) the primary and secondary nodes are all static; (ii) the primary nodes are static while the secondary nodes are mobile. With the proposed protocols for the two tiers, we show that the primary tier can achieve a per-node throughput scaling of λ_p(n)=Θ(1/log n) in the above two scenarios. In the associated delay analysis for the first scenario, we show that the primary tier can achieve a delay scaling of D_p(n)=Θ(√(n^β log n λ_p(n))) with λ_p(n)=O(1/log n). In the second scenario, with two mobility models considered for the secondary nodes: an i.i.d. mobility model and a random walk model, we show that the primary tier can achieve delay scaling laws of Θ(1) and Θ(1/S), respectively, where S is the random walk step size. The throughput and delay scaling laws for the secondary tier are also established, which are the same as those for a stand-alone network.