Throughput scaling for random hybrid wireless networks with physical-layer network coding

With an increasing demand in user experience and service quality, there is a strong need for a massively enhanced throughput of current wireless networks. It has been shown that the capacity of a random ad hoc network does not scale well with the growing number of nodes [1]. This paper considers a random hybrid wireless network, in which nodes access the wireless channel in an uncoordinated manner to transfer their messages to a network of base stations interconnected by high-rate wired communication links. Moreover, physical-layer network coding (PLNC) is used to harness the interference, which presents the main performance bottleneck in wireless systems. Assuming a random hybrid network, we analyze the impact of PLNC on the throughput scaling. We show that each node can achieve a higher throughput that scales sublinearly or linearly with the number of base stations. This is in fact a significant improvement when compared to previous studies in which the impact of adding base stations on the network throughput is insignificant whenever the number of base stations grows slower than some threshold.