Joint Routing, Channel Assignment, and Scheduling for Throughput Maximization in General Interference Models

Throughput optimization in wireless networks with multiple channels and multiple radio interfaces per node is a challenging problem. For general traffic models (given a set of source-destination pairs), optimization of throughput entails design of ¿efficient¿ routes between the given source-destination pairs, in conjunction with (1) assignment of channels to interfaces and communication links and (2) scheduling of noninterfering links for simultaneous transmission. Prior work has looked at restricted versions of the above problem. In this paper, we design approximation algorithms for the joint routing, channel assignment, and link scheduling problem in wireless networks with general interference models. The unique contributions of our work include addressing the above joint problem in the context of physical interference model and single-path routing (wherein, traffic between a source-destination pair is restricted to a single path). To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first work to address the throughput maximization problem in such general contexts. For each setting, we design approximation algorithms with provable performance guarantees. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms in general contexts through simulations.