Maximum End-to-End Throughput of Chain-Topology Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

Understanding the maximum end-to-end throughput available with any given wireless multi-hop network is an important, but very challenging task. It may be approximated up to certain degree for several simplified topologies such as chain, cross, and others. Typically, in case of chain-topology wireless multi-hop networks employing IEEE 802.11 DCF (distributed coordination function), the maximum throughput can be derived by calculating 1-hop average throughput considering the so-called bottleneck region. However, this approximation method that utilizes only the 1-hop average throughput is limited in terms of accuracy. Thus, in this paper, after verifying the limitation of 1-hop average approximation for the throughput calculation of chain-topology multi-hop wireless networks, a refined calculation scheme is proposed by additionally considering the deviation of throughput. Especially, we focus on the fact that the throughput deviation could lead to collisions, and the throughput deviation happens due to the summation of uniformly distributed backoff times of IEEE 802.11 DCF. With several ns-2-based network simulations, we verify the impact of selected temporal variations to the throughput calculation and thus validate the improved accuracy of proposed calculation scheme.