Throughput and delay analysis of wireless random access networks

The network throughput and transport delay of a wireless random access network are studied in this paper based on a Markov renewal model of packet transportation. We show that the distribution of the source-to-destination (SD) distance plays a crucial role in characterizing the network performances. The necessary and sufficient condition on the SD-distance is established for scalable network throughput. The optimal rate allocation issue is also addressed with fairness taken into consideration. In order to achieve the network scalability, several traffic scaling laws are delineated by localizing the traffic pattern, and a leaky bucket scheme at the network access is proposed for traffic shaping and flow control.