Sergio Servetto

Title: On the Feasibility of Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks.
Author: S. D. Servetto.
Status: In the Proceedings of the 40th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing, Urbana, IL, October 2002.
Abstract: Gupta and Kumar showed that for one particular class of wireless networks with n nodes, the per-node throughput is O(1/\sqrt{n}). From this observation, it was concluded that networks with a large number of nodes are not feasible, on the basis that as the number of nodes becomes large the throughput available to each node tends to zero. In this paper we explore the use of the Gupta/Kumar model in the context of wireless sensor networks. We set up a problem which involves a large number of devices collecting highly correlated measurements within a confined area. An important feature of our formulation is that, although the per-node throughput of the network does tend to zero as the network size increases, so does the amount of information generated by each transmitter. This observation allows us to cast under new--and more "optimistic"--light the Gupta/Kumar results: as long as the rate at which nodes generate information decays faster than the throughput of the network, reliable communication is still possible in networks of arbitrary size.