Approaching Optimal Centralized Scheduling with CSMA-based Random Access over Fading Channels

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fully distributed randomized CSMA-based algorithm that achieves near-optimal throughput and delay performance in fading channels, closely matching centralized Max-Weight policy results in practical networks.

Contribution

It proposes a novel distributed algorithm with arbitrary back-off times that approaches centralized Max-Weight performance in fading channels, including a practical reservation scheme.

Findings

Achieves throughput and delay close to centralized Max-Weight policy.

Works over fading channels with arbitrary back-off times.

Provides a practical distributed algorithm with reservation scheme.

Abstract

Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) based distributed algorithms can attain the largest capacity region as the centralized Max-Weight policy does. Despite their capability of achieving throughput-optimality, these algorithms can either incur large delay and have large complexity or only operate over non-fading channels. In this letter, by assuming arbitrary back-off time we first propose a fully distributed randomized algorithm whose performance can be pushed to the performance of the centralized Max-Weight policy not only in terms of throughput but also in terms of delay for completely-connected interference networks with fading channels. Then, inspired by the proposed algorithm we introduce an implementable distributed algorithm for practical networks with a reservation scheme. We show that the proposed practical algorithm can still achieve the performance of the centralized Max-Weight policy.