A Network Information Theory for Wireless Communication: Scaling Laws and Optimal Operation

How much information can be carried over a wireless network with a multiplicity of nodes, and how should the nodes cooperate to transfer information? To study these questions, we formulate a model of wireless networks that particularly takes into account the distances between nodes, and the resulting attenuation of radio signals, and study a performance measure that weights information by the distance over which it is transported. Consider a network with the following features. I) n nodes located on a plane, with minimum separation distance /spl rho//sub min/>0. II) A simplistic model of signal attenuation e/sup -/spl gamma//spl rho////spl rho//sup /spl delta// over a distance /spl rho/, where /spl gamma//spl…