Data gathering capacity of large scale multihop wireless networks

This paper studies the scaling laws of the data gathering capacity of large scale multihop wireless networks. Unlike the data communication paradigms studied in previous research, for example, the many-to-many, many-to-one, broadcast, and multicast paradigms, the data gathering capacity concerns the per source node throughput in a network where a subset of nodes send data to some designated destinations while other nodes serve as relays. This some-to-some communication paradigm is commonplace in many wireless networks, for example, wireless mesh networks and wireless sensor networks, and in some cases perhaps more prevalent than the other paradigms. We first derive the upper and constructive lower bounds for the data gathering capacity, and then examine their design and performance implications. Our results show that the data gathering capacity is constrained by different factors in several different scaling regimes of the number of source and destination nodes, exhibiting distinct scaling laws in those regimes. This work fills a gap in our understanding of the capacity of various communication paradigms, and can lead to better network planning and performance for data gathering wireless network applications.