In this paper, the effect of spatial diversity on the throughput and reliability of wireless networks is examined. Spatial diversity is realized through multiple independently fading transmit/receive antenna paths in single-user communication and through independently fading links in multiuser communication. Adopting spatial diversity as a central theme, we start by studying its information-theoretic foundations, then we illustrate its benefits across the physical (signal transmission/coding

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... receiver signal processing) and networking (resource allocation, routing, and applications) layers. Throughout the paper, we discuss engineering intuition and tradeoffs, emphasizing the strong interactions between the various network functionalities.