Flow Allocation for Maximum Throughput and Bounded Delay on Multiple Disjoint Paths for Random Access Wireless Multihop Networks

TL;DR

This paper presents a distributed flow allocation scheme for multi-hop wireless networks with multi-packet reception, optimizing throughput and delay by modeling interference accurately and validating with simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel non-convex optimization-based flow allocation method that accounts for intra- and inter-path interference in multi-path wireless networks.

Findings

The model accurately predicts aggregate throughput in various scenarios.

The proposed scheme outperforms round-robin and single-path allocation methods.

Simulation results confirm significant throughput improvements.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider random access, wireless, multi-hop networks, with multi-packet reception capabilities, where multiple flows are forwarded to the gateways through node disjoint paths. We explore the issue of allocating flow on multiple paths, exhibiting both intra- and inter-path interference, in order to maximize average aggregate flow throughput (AAT) and also provide bounded packet delay. A distributed flow allocation scheme is proposed where allocation of flow on paths is formulated as an optimization problem. Through an illustrative topology it is shown that the corresponding problem is non-convex. Furthermore, a simple, but accurate model is employed for the average aggregate throughput achieved by all flows, that captures both intra- and inter-path interference through the SINR model. The proposed scheme is evaluated through Ns2 simulations of several random wireless scenarios. Simulation results reveal that, the model employed, accurately captures the AAT observed in the simulated scenarios, even when the assumption of saturated queues is removed. Simulation results also show that the proposed scheme achieves significantly higher AAT, for the vast majority of the wireless scenarios explored, than the following flow allocation schemes: one that assigns flows on paths on a round-robin fashion, one that optimally utilizes the best path only, and another one that assigns the maximum possible flow on each path. Finally, a variant of the proposed scheme is explored, where interference for each link is approximated by considering its dominant interfering nodes only.