Coding Improves the Throughput-Delay Tradeoff in Mobile Wireless Networks

This paper studies the throughput-delay performance tradeoff in large-scale wireless ad hoc networks. It has been shown that the per source-destination pair throughput can be improved from Theta(1/root n log n) to Theta(1) if nodes are allowed to move and a two-hop relay scheme is employed. The price paid for such a throughput improvement is large delay. Indeed, the delay scaling of the two-hop relay scheme is Theta(n log n) under the random walk mobility model. In this paper, coding techniques are used to improve the throughput-delay tradeoff for mobile wireless networks. For the random walk mobility model, the delay is reduced from Theta(n log n) to Theta(n) to by employing a maximum distance separable Reed-Solomon coding scheme. This coding approach maintains the diversity gained by mobility while decreasing the delay.