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Sensor network with mobile access (SENMA) is an architecture in which randomly deployed low-power sensors are orchestrated by a few powerful mobile access points (APs). This paper considers SENMA from energy-efficiency and information-theoretic perspectives. By allowing sensors to propagate data directly to mobile APs over multiaccess channels, and relieving sensors from energy-consuming network functions, SENMA has the potential of offering orders of magnitude of improvement in energy efficiency over the multihop ad hoc architecture, as demonstrated by our analysis on scalability. Optimization configurations of SENMA such as the altitude, the trajectory, and the coverage of APs are considered next, using the sum-rate as the performance metric. Optimal strategies for single and multiple APs are determined. For multiple APs, the possibility of and the gain due to cooperation (i.e., joint decoding of signals received at different APs) are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative broadcast aims to deliver a source message to a locally connected network by means of collaborating nodes. In traditional architectures, node cooperation has been at the network layer. Recently, physical layer cooperative schemes have been shown to offer several advantages over the network layer approaches. This form of cooperation employs distributed transmission resources at the physical layer as a single radio with spatial diversity. In decentralized cooperation schemes, collaborating nodes make transmission decisions based on the quality of the received signal, which is the only parameter available locally. In this case, critical parameters that influence the broadcast performance include the source/relay transmission powers and the decoding threshold (the minimum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) required to decode a transmission). We study the effect of these parameters on the number of nodes reached by cooperative broadcast. In particular, we show that there exists a phase transition in the network behavior: if the decoding threshold is below a critical value, the message is delivered to the whole network. Otherwise, only a fraction of the nodes is reached, which is proportional to the source transmit power. Our approach is based on the idea of continuum approximation, which yields closed-form expressions that are accurate when the network density is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the problem of communicating sensor readings over a Gaussian multiaccess channel. We focus on the scenario that each sensor observes a single random variable and transmits it using certain signaling in a shared channel. The objective is the design of channel waveforms (i.e., the signal constellation) to facilitate the estimation of field parameters from the channel output. We propose a communication scheme in which sensors transmit according to the type of their observations—type-based multiple access (TBMA)—and show that the TBMA is asymptotically optimal in the limit of large number of sensors if the sensor channel-gains are identical. In particular, we show that TBMA together with a variant of the maximum-likelihood estimator achieves the Cramer-Rao bound asymptotically. We then extend the asymptotic analysis of TBMA to fading channels and compare the performance of TBMA with other orthogonal allocation methods such as time-division multiple access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of multipacket reception (MPR) on stability and delay of slotted ALOHA based random-access systems is considered. A general asymmetric MPH model is introduced and the medium-access control (MAC) capacity region is specified. An explicit characterization of the ALOHA stability region for the two-user system is given. It is shown that the stability region undergoes a phase transition from a concave region to a convex polyhedral region as the MPR capability improves. It is also shown that after this phase transition, slotted ALOHA is optimal i.e., the ALOHA stability region coincides with the MAC capacity region. Further, it is observed that there is no need for transmission control when ALOHA is optimal i.e., ALOHA with transmission probability one is optimal. Next, these results are extended to a symmetric N > 2 user ALOHA system. Finally, a complete characterization of average delay in capture channels for the two-user system is given. It is shown that in certain capture scenarios, ALOHA with transmission probability one is delay optimal for all stable arrival rates. Further, it is also shown that ALOHA with transmission probability one is optimal for stability and delay simultaneously in the two-user capture channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the stability and capacity problems in regular wireless networks. In the first part of the paper, we provide a general approach to characterizing the capacity region of arbitrary networks, find an outer bound to the capacity region in terms of the transport capacity, and discuss connections between the capacity formulation and the stability of node buffers. In the second part of the paper, we obtain closed-form expressions for the capacity of Manhattan (two-dimensional grid) and ring networks (circular array of nodes). We also find the optimal (i.e., capacity-achieving) medium access and routing policies. Our objective in analyzing regular networks is to provide insights and design guidelines for general networks. The knowledge of the exact capacity enables us to quantify the loss incurred by suboptimal protocols such as slotted ALOHA medium access and random-walk-based routing. Optimal connectivity and the effects of link fading on network capacity are also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]