On the Fundamental Relationship Determining the Capacity of Static and Mobile Wireless Networks

Abstract: Studying the capacity of wireless multi-hop networks is an important problem and extensive research has been done in the area. In this letter, we sift through various capacity-impacting parameters and show that the capacity of both static and mobile networks is fundamentally determined by the average number of simultaneous transmissions, the link capacity and the average number of transmissions required to deliver a packet to its destination. We then use this result to explain and help to better understand existing results on the capacities of static networks, mobile networks and hybrid networks and the multicast capacity.