Abstract-We consider a large-scale wireless network, but with a low density of nodes per unit area. Interferences are then less critical, contrary to connectivity. This paper studies the latter property for both a purely ad-hoc network and a hybrid network, where fixed base stations can be reached in multiple hops. We assume here that power constraints are modeled by a maximal distance above which two nodes are not (directly) connected. We find that the introduction of a sparse network of base stations does significantly help in increasing the connectivity, but only when the node density is much larger in one dimension than in the other. We explain the results by percolation theory. We obtain analytical expressions of the probability of connectivity in the 1-dim. case. We also show that at a low spatial density of nodes, bottlenecks are unavoidable. Results obtained on actual population data confirm our findings.
For heterogeneous ad hoc networks, it is proven in REF that the connectivity of ad hoc networks can be improved by using base stations in certain conditions.
Connectivity in ad-hoc and hybrid networks
Proceedings.Twenty-First Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies
Proceedings.Twenty-First Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies
Computer Science