Improved throughput scaling in wireless ad hoc networks with infrastructure

We analyze the benefits of infrastructure support in improving the throughput scaling in networks of n randomly located wireless nodes. The infrastructure uses multi-antenna base stations (BSs), in which the number of BSs and the number of antennas at each BS can scale at arbtrary rates relative to n. We introduce two multi-antenna BS-based routing protocols and analyze their throughput scaling laws. Two conventional schemes not using BSs are also shown for comparison. In dense networks, we show that the BS-based routing schemes do not improve the throughput scaling. In contrast, in extended networks, we show what our BS-based routing schemes can, under certain network conditions, improve the throughput scaling significantly.