Logarithmic expected packet delivery delay in mobile ad hoc wireless networks

It has been shown that in a mobile ad hoc wireless network per node throughput remains constant as the number of nodes approaches infinity, when the nodes lie in a disk of unit area. However, this requires that some packets are delivered indirectly by a relay node. In this paper, we prove, in the same setup, that D(k)2 (log k), where D(k) is the expected delay time of a mobile ad hoc wireless network with k nodes. As consequence, we have concluded that mobile ad hoc wireless networks are not scalable for real-time applications. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.