On the Throughput Capacity of Large Wireless Ad Hoc Networks Confined to a Region of Fixed Area

We study the throughput capacity of large ad hoc networks confined to a square region of fixed area, thus exploring the dependence of the achievable throughput on the spatial node density. We find that there exists the value of the node density (the “critical” density) depending on the ratio of the total noise power to the transmit power such that the throughput increases as n(α−1)/2 at first, reaches a maximum, and then decreases as n−1/2.