A framework for joint scheduling and diversity exploitation under physical interference in wireless mesh networks

Recently, interest has arisen in use of realistic interference models for transmission scheduling in wireless multihop networks, particularly in mesh networks where throughput is a major concern. In this work, we use the SINR-based physical interference model and develop a uniform framework for transmission scheduling when diverse wireless resources can be exploited. The factors considered are multiple (possibly overlapped) channels, directional antennas, and transmit power control. We develop an efficient heuristic for computing a diversity exploiting schedule based on a new network saturation metric. We prove that, under uniform random node distributions, the schedule produced by our heuristic is within a poly-log factor from optimal with a probability that approaches one as network size increases. Through simulation, we demonstrate the ability of our algorithm to achieve up to a 10-fold throughput improvement with respect to networks without diversity. Our analysis also reveals a number of insights on the ability of diversity exploitation to reduce or eliminate interference.