Kumar’s, Zipf’s and other laws: how to structure a large-scale wireless network?

Networks with a very large number of nodes are known to suffer from scalability problems, influencing throughput, delay, and other quality-of-service parameters. Mainly applicable to wireless sensor networks, this paper extends prior work and aims to give some fundamental indications on a scalable and optimum (or near-optimum) structuring approach for large-scale wireless networks. In: European wireless 2007, Paris, April 2007 (conference CD-ROM), 2007) and aims to give some fundamental indications on a scalable and optimum (or near-optimum) structuring approach for large-scale wireless networks. Scalability and optimality will be defined with relation to various performance criteria, an example of which is the throughput per node in the network. Various laws known from different domains will be invoked to quantify the performance of a given topology; most notably, we will make use of the well-known Kumar’s law, as well as less-known Zipf’s and other scaling laws. Optimum network structures are derived and discussed for a plethora of different scenarios, facilitating knowledgeable design guidelines for these types of networks.