Scheduling links for heavy traffic on interfering routes in wireless mesh networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes heuristic graph-based methods to schedule links in wireless mesh networks under heavy traffic, aiming to maximize throughput while managing interference.

Contribution

It introduces two multicoloring heuristics for link scheduling in interference-prone wireless mesh networks, with one dynamically exploiting communication opportunities.

Findings

One heuristic significantly outperforms the other in simulations.

Dynamic exploitation of communication opportunities improves scheduling efficiency.

The approach effectively manages interference to enhance throughput.

Abstract

We consider wireless mesh networks and the problem of scheduling the links of a given set of routes under the assumption of a heavy-traffic pattern. We assume some TDMA protocol provides a background of synchronized time slots and seek to schedule the routes' links to maximize the number of packets that get delivered to their destinations per time slot. Our approach is to construct an undirected graph G and to heuristically obtain node multicolorings for G that can be turned into efficient link schedules. In G each node represents a link to be scheduled and the edges are set up to represent every possible interference for any given set of interference assumptions. We present two multicoloring-based heuristics and study their performance through extensive simulations. One of the two heuristics is based on relaxing the notion of a node multicoloring by dynamically exploiting the availability of communication opportunities that would otherwise be wasted. We have found that, as a consequence, its performance is significantly superior to the other's.