Lattice networks: capacity limits, optimal routing, and queueing behavior

Lattice networks are widely used in regular settings like grid computing, distributed control, satellite constellations, and sensor networks. Thus, limits on capacity, optimal routing policies, and performance with finite buffers are key issues and are addressed in this paper. In particular, we study the routing algorithms that achieve the maximum rate per node for infinite and finite buffers in the nodes and different communication models, namely uniform communications, central data gathering and border data gathering. In the case of nodes with infinite buffers, we determine the capacity of the network and we characterize the set of optimal routing algorithms that achieve capacity. In the case of nodes with finite buffers, we approximate the queue network problem and obtain the distribution on the queue size at the nodes. This distribution allows us to study the effect of routing on the queue distribution and derive the algorithms that achieve the maximum rate.