In a breakthrough, we are able to give a simple description of 'capacity' of cellular wireless networks. Shannon capacity is intractable for most wireless networks, and a surrogate definition is used. The capacity is defined to be the largest ratio of the basestation density and the expected delay (number of retransmissions needed till success) seen at any mobile. This capacity definition captures the inherent practical aspects of wireless networks while still being analytically non-trivial (this is joint work with Srikanth Iyer at IISc).
