Sensor networks with random versus uniform topology: MAC and interference considerations

A new communication-theoretic framework for evaluating the performance of static ad hoc wireless networks (e.g., sensor networks) in terms of bit-error-rate (BER) has been introduced (Tonguz, O.K. and Ferrari, G., Carnegie Mellon University, ECE Dept., Tech. Rep. TR-043-2003, 2003; Ferrari and Tonguz, MILCOM, 2003; GLOBECOM, 2003); in it, for simplicity, it was assumed that the nodes lie at the vertices of a uniform square grid structure. Although this framework provides good insights into the performance of a sensor network, the square grid assumption makes it rather idealistic. In fact, the positions of nodes in a real sensor network are more likely to be random. We extend the framework to analyze the performance of an ad hoc wireless network with random topology, and we compare the obtained results with those obtained in the case of the uniform grid topology.