Wireless Backhaul Networks: Capacity Bound, Scalability Analysis and Design Guidelines

This paper studies the scalability of a wireless back-haul network modeled as a random extended network with multi-antenna base stations (BSs), where the number of antennas per BS is allowed to scale as a function of the network size. The antenna scaling is justified by the current trend toward the use of higher carrier frequencies, which allows packing a large number of antennas in small form factors. The main goal is to study the per-BS antenna requirement that ensures scalability of this network, i.e., its ability to deliver nonvanishing rate to each source-destination pair. We first derive an information theoretic upper bound on the capacity of this network under a general propagation model, which provides a lower bound on the per-BS antenna requirement. Then, we characterize the scalability requirements for two competing strategies of interest: 1) long hop: each source-destination pair minimizes the number of hops by sacrificing multiplexing gain while achieving full beamforming (power) gain over each hop; and 2) short hop: each source-destination pair communicates through a series of short hops, each achieving full multiplexing gain. While long hop may seem more intuitive in the context of massive multiple-input-multiple-output transmission, we show that the short hop strategy is significantly more efficient in terms of per-BS antenna requirement for throughput scalability. As a part of the proof, we construct a scalable short hop strategy and show that it does not violate any fundamental limits on the spatial degrees of freedom.