System capacity, latency, and power consumption in multihop-routed SS-CDMA wireless networks

Ad-hoc wireless networking presents challenges that are different from those of tethered networks in several significant ways. In addition to high error rates and constantly varying channels, mobile communication imposes new constraints, including limited energy supplies, and the need for portability. A system for wireless networking utilizing code division multiple access (CDMA), in conjunction with spread spectrum (SS) modulation is presented. By combining SS, automatic power control and local coordination, a "collisionless," energy and spectrum efficient system can be created which is capable of simultaneously providing high bandwidth and low latency communications. A new routing method, minimum consumed energy routing is evaluated. This new method is shown to reduce latency by 75%, reduce power consumption by 15%, and avoid congestion, in comparison with minimum transmitted energy routing. A simulator, SSNetSim, was developed to simulate the performance of these networks. By taking into account factors such as station placement, traffic patterns, routing strategies, and path loss, network performance, in terms of SNR, throughput, latency, and power consumption, is computed.