In this paper, we derive the information theoretic capacity of a specialclass of mesh networks. A mesh network is a heterogeneous wireless network inwhich the transmission among power limited nodes is assisted by powerfulrelays, which use the same wireless medium. We investigate the mesh networkwhen there is one source, one destination, and multiple relays, which we callthe single source multiple relay single destination (SSMRSD) mesh network. Wederive the asymptotic capacity of the SSMRSD mesh network when the relay powersgrow to infinity. Our approach is as follows. We first look at an upper boundon the information theoretic capacity of these networks in a Gaussian setting.We then show that this bound is achievable asymptotically using thecompress-and-forward strategy for the multiple relay channel. We also performnumerical computations for the case when the relays have finite powers. Weobserve that even when the relay power is only a few times larger than thesource power, the compress-and-forward rate gets close to the capacity. Theresults indicate the value of cooperation in wireless mesh networks. Thecapacity characterization quantifies how the relays can cooperate, using thecompress-and-forward strategy, to either conserve node energy or to increasetransmission rate.
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