Self-coordinating localized fair queueing in wireless ad hoc networks

Distributed fair queueing in a multihop, wireless ad hoc network is challenging for several reasons. First, the wireless channel is shared among multiple contending nodes in a spatial locality. Location-dependent channel contention complicates the fairness notion. Second, the sender of a flow does not have explicit information regarding the contending flows originated from other nodes. Fair queueing over ad hoc networks is a distributed scheduling problem by nature. Finally, the wireless channel capacity is a scarce resource. Spatial channel reuse, i.e., simultaneous transmissions of flows that do not interfere with each other, should be encouraged whenever possible. In this paper, we reexamine the fairness notion in an ad hoc network using a graph-theoretic formulation and extract the fairness requirements that an ad hoc fair queueing algorithm should possess. To meet these requirements, we propose maximize-local-minimum fair queueing (MLM-FQ), a novel distributed packet scheduling algorithm where local schedulers self-coordinate their scheduling decisions and collectively achieve fair bandwidth sharing. We then propose enhanced MLM-FQ (EMLM-FQ) to further improve the spatial channel reuse and limit the impact of inaccurate scheduling information resulted from collisions. EMLM-FQ achieves statistical short-term throughput and delay bounds over the shared wireless channel. Analysis and extensive simulations confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of our self-coordinating localized design in providing global fair channel access in wireless ad hoc networks.