The Impacts of Physical Layer Parameters on the Connectivity of Ad-Hoc Networks

We study the effects of physical layer parameters on the connectivity of fading ad-hoc networks. Relying on a symbol error rate connectivity metric for such networks, we assume a pair of nodes are connected if their bi-directional measure of connectivity satisfies a given threshold. We investigate the effects of three parameters on the connectivity phenomenon. First and assuming the nodes are distributed over a fixed finite area, we study the effects of the changes in nodes´ density. Next, we measure the connectivity effects of the interference coefficients, i.e., the portion of power an interfering node contributes to other links. Finally, we experiment with the threshold of link quality for connectedness. For each parameter, we also provide an intuitive explanation of the phenomena observed in our experiments. Our simulation results show that (1) depending on the value of interference coefficient, an increase in node density may increase or decrease, and (2) increasing the interference coefficients and thresholds of link quality will decrease the connectivity of fading ad-hoc networks.