Investigation of Wraparound Techniques for the Simulation of Wireless Cellular Networks

A common approach to obtaining analytical results for the performance of wireless cellular networks relies on assuming an infinite amount of interferers. For simulations with finite dimensions, interference is often inadequately represented for users in the border region. These border effects can be circumvented by a wraparound that allows signals that leave the region of interest on one side to reappear on the opposite side, thus mirroring the missing interferers beyond the scenario boundary. In this paper, we determine a minimal network size for which the simulation with wraparound strategy approximates the infinitely stretched out network. We compare this strategy to the interference region strategy, for which dummy interferers are placed outside of the simulated network. The effects of the chosen network size and path loss exponent on the accuracy of the two strategies are discussed.