Capacity Scaling in Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Network with Infrastructure Support

We study the throughput capacity of mobile wireless ad hoc networks with infrastructure support. Mobility and infrastructure support independently have been shown to be effective ways to improve capacity, but few work has analyzed the impact of their combination. In our work we consider an ad hoc network with n users and k base stations. All base stations are wired to each other with bandwidth c(n). We adopt a general mobility model where users move with arbitrary patterns within a bounded distance around their home-points, and let the area of the network scales as f²(n). We show that for different parameters, mobility can be divided into strong, weak and trivial regimes. The per-node capacity is Θ(1/f(n)) + Θ(min(k² c/n, k/n)) under strong mobility, and is Θ(min(k² c/n, k/n)) in the two latter cases. We also discuss optimal communication schemes and system parameters in each regime. Our study provides fundamental insight on the understanding and design of wireless ad hoc network.