Traffic congestion in spatial broadcasting networks

Abstract

We study congestion in communication networks that use a shortest path route algorithm for packet delivery and have fixed geographical node locations. Packets are generated at a constant rate at randomly selected source nodes for delivery to randomly designated destination nodes. Each node has a fixed forwarding rate: packets wait at a node’s queue until it is processed (accepted or forwarded). Using the average waiting time of packets at a node, we show how traffic flow changes from free flow to a congested state for various spatial network topologies.