Final Exam of CS662: Data Comm and Networking

taken-home, Assigned on Nov. 26th, Fall 2010

Due: 11:59am, Dec. 10th, 2010
CS Department, MSU, Mankato

Name :

Section:

Instructions:
1. You can not discuss anything with your classmates. Identical solutions will be looked as
cheating and received zero.
2. Write your answer concisely without losing any correctness.
3. You may lose 5 points if your writing is hard to read and understand.

1. (20 points)
In 802.11, any node who hears the RTS message or the CTS message cannot initiate any new transmission
for the duration of NAV. Some people argue that this reduces throughput, and suggest that a node can still
initiate new transmissions if it hears only RTS. Please discuss any potential problem, if any, of allowing
nodes who hear only RTS to initiate transmissions.
2. (30 points)
The capacity analysis shows that for wireless networks
r
8W√
λL ≤ n
π ∆
where λ is the aggregated end-to-end throughput, and L is the average (direct-line) distance of all source-
destination pairs (assume that the network is scaled so that all nodes are in a unit disk). In this problem
we consider the case that the source-destination pairs are located throughout the network. Then L is a
constant (i.e., on the order of radius). Thus the aggregated end-to-end throughput λ is on the order of
only O(n1/2 ).
(a) (15 points)People propose to improve capacity by placing base stations to reduce L. Assume you
have M base stations placed regularly in the network. The base stations partition the network into
non-overlapping cells and each node belongs to one cell. When a source sends to a destination, if
the destination is in the same cell, the message travels through the wireless network. Otherwise, the
message first goes to the base station of the source, then travels through the wired network connecting
all base stations (you can assume the wired network has infinite capacity) to the base station of the
destination, and then finally travels through the wireless network to the destination. What is an upper
bound on L (namely the length a message travels in the wireless part of the network) as a function of
M? (A rough order such as constant, 1/M 2 , 1/M, or1/M 1/2 will be enough.)
(b) (15 points)How many base stations does a network operator needs in order to make the end-to-end
throughput on the order of O(n)? (A rough order such as O(n) or O(n2 ) is enough.) Is the base
station approach effective in improving capacity?
3. (30 points)
Consider two transmitters (or base stations) in a plane at the two points p1 = (0, 0) and p2 = (a, 0).
Assume that they transmit at power P1 and P2 respectively with P1 < P2 . Give the service regions of
these two transmitters. Which transmitter has the bounded service region? Now suppose there are n
transmitters in the plane with transmission power P1 < P2 < · · · < Pn . Show that all transmitters except
the one with the largest transmission power have bounded service regions.
4. (20 points)
Consider four broadcast stations u1 , v1 , u2 and v2 with u1 v1 and u2 v2 being two intersecting line segments.
Assume that u1 interferes with v1 , and u2 interferes with v2 . Prove that either u1 interferes with u2 , or v1
interferes with v2 .