Analysis and simulation of a distributed rural radiotelephone network

The paper presents the results of simulations of a self configuring radio system using packet radio techniques to set up duplex circuits, which has many advantages for the provision of telephone services in rural areas of developing countries. It is justifiable to consider blocking on this type of network as being described by the order of the network consisting of the stations not being used at any instant for carrying traffic. So long as this is over some magic number the blocking is adequately small. Increasing the order can be achieved if necessary by increasing power and antenna height. However this has the disadvantage of causing congestion on the traffic channels. There is therefore much to be gained by the use of efficient routing algorithms which approach the theoretical limit based on whether stations are in disconnected sets, without generating undue amounts of traffic on the calling channel. Simulation results have been presented for a simple algorithm which shows promise but has too high a `magic number´. Analysis is performed to show how this can be improved