Throughput Capacity of MANETs with Power Control and Packet Redundancy

This paper studies the exact per node throughput capacity of a MANET, where the transmission power of each node can be controlled to adapt to a specified transmission range υ and a generalized two-hop relay with limited packet redundancy f is adopted for packet routing. Based on the concept of automatic feedback control and the Markov chain model, we first develop a general theoretical framework to fully depict the complicated packet delivery process in the challenging MANET. With the help of the framework, we are then able to derive the exact per node throughput capacity for a fixed setting of both υ and f. Based on the new throughput result, we further explore the optimal throughput capacity for any f but a fixed υ and also determine the corresponding optimum setting of f to achieve it. This result helps us to understand how such optimal capacity varies with υ (and thus transmission power) and to find the maximum possible throughput capacity of such a network for any f and υ. Interestingly, our results show that increasing the transmission power of the nodes improves the capacity, which is the same as that proved in fixed networks.