Abstract

We report on the results of an experimental study of scaling laws in ad hoc networks employing IEEE 802.11 technology. Our results show that the per node throughput declines like n 1.68 bits/sec, where n is the number of nodes in the network. These results are considerably worse than the scaling laws shown to be attainable in theory. The results point to the need for improvements to existing hardware and protocols if one is to entertain the possibility of building ad hoc networks with a large number of nodes.

Citations