Towards a Tractable Delay Analysis in Large Wireless Networks

Meeting the diverse delay requirements of next-generation wireless communication networks is one of the most critical goals of wireless system design. Though the delay of point-to-point communications has been well investigated using classical queueing theory, the delay of multi-point to multi-point communications has not been explored in depth. The main technical difficulty lies in the interacting queues problem, in which the service rate is coupled with the statuses of other queues. In this article, we elaborate on the main challenges of delay analysis in large wireless networks. Several promising approaches to bypass these difficulties are proposed and summarized to provide useful guidance. Yi Zhong is with School of Electronic Information and Communications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, P. R. China (e-mail: [email protected]). Martin Haenggi is with Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame 46556, USA (email: [email protected]). Fu-Chun Zheng is with School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, and National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing, China (Email: [email protected]). Wenyi Zhang is with Dept. of Electronic Engineering and Information Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China (e-mail: [email protected]). Tony Q.S. Quek is with Information Systems Technology and Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore (e-mail: [email protected]). Weili Nie is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA (e-mail: [email protected]).