This thesis is divided into two parts. In Part I we study metastability properties of queue-based random-access protocols for wireless networks. The network is modeledas a bipartite graph whose... Show moreThis thesis is divided into two parts. In Part I we study metastability properties of queue-based random-access protocols for wireless networks. The network is modeledas a bipartite graph whose edges represent interference constraints. In Part II we study spectra of inhomogeneous Erdős-Rényi random graphs. We focus in particularon the limiting spectral distribution of the adjacency and Laplacian matrices and on the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix. Show less