Network modulation: A new dimension to enhance wireless network performance

We introduce an approach called network modulation which gives us a new dimension to improve wireless network throughput and save energy. In current wireless systems, when a source transmits data to the receiver through a single-hop or multi-hop wireless path, the physical layer modulates and demodulates the information bits hop-by-hop, and the transmission over each hop is treated the same as in a point-to-point communication link. Given the broadcast nature of wireless medium and the wide variation of wireless channel quality, we let a sender transmit messages to multiple receivers simultaneously, using a software mapping technology, called network modulation, to redefine the constellation of typical quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) schemes. As the software-based network modulation schemes do not require specialized communication hardware, they can be implemented with low cost and high flexibility. Network modulation can be used to improve network performance in a wide range of scenarios, for anycast (broadcast, multicast and unicast) services, one-way or two-way traffic, and single-hop or multi-hop wireless paths, in infrastructure or ad hoc networks. The minimum requirement for applying network modulation is that there are no less than three nodes within each others´ transmission ranges, so we can consider modulation, topology control, resource allocation, and routing jointly.