Modeling Interference in Uniformly Random Wireless Networks: Theory and Applications

This thesis deals with the modeling of interference in a uniformly random wireless network with fading. The channel access mechanism considered is slotted ALOHA, and to obtain a fairly general set of results, the channel fading amplitude is taken to be Nakagami-m distributed. Under these settings, we obtain a closed-form expression for the moment generating function (MGF) of the interference power. The MGF is used to compute the interference moments, which accurately depict the asymptotic behavior of the network interference as the number of nodes increases. An important application of the interference characterization is the evaluation of the system outage performance.As another application, we study the problem of path loss exponent (PLE) estimation in large wireless networks, which is relevant to several important topics in communications such as localization, energy-efficient transmission and handoff initiation in cellular networks. We formulate three different algorithms for PLE estimation, each based on a specific network characteristic. We also provide simulation results to demonstrate the performance of the algorithms and quantify the estimation errors.