Mother nature knows best: A survey of recent results on wireless networks based on analogies with physics

We survey recent results on wireless networks that are based on analogies with various branches of Physics. We address, among others, the problems of optimally arranging the flow of traffic in wireless sensor networks, finding minimum-cost routes, performing load balancing, optimizing and analyzing cooperative transmissions, calculating the capacity, finding routes that avoid bottlenecks, and developing distributed anycasting protocols. The results are based on establishing analogies between wireless networks and settings from various branches of Physics, such as Electrostatics, Optics, Percolation theory, Diffusion, and others. Many of the results we present hinge on the assumption that the network is massive, i.e., it consists of so many nodes that it can be described in terms of a novel macroscopic view. The macroscopic view is not as detailed as the standard microscopic one, but nevertheless contains enough details to permit a meaningful optimization.