Performance Metric Sensitivity Computation for Optimization and Trade-Off Analysis in Wireless Networks

We develop and evaluate a new method for estimating and optimizing various performance metrics for multi- hop wireless networks, including MANETs. We introduce an approximate (throughput) loss model that couples the physical, MAC and routing layers effects. The model provides quantitative statistical relations between the loss parameters that are used to characterize multiuser interference and physical path conditions on the one hand and the traffic rates between origin-destination pairs on the other. The model takes into account effects of the hidden nodes, scheduling algorithms, IEEE 802.11 MAC and PHY layer transmission failures and finite packet transmission retries at the MAC layer in arbitrary network topologies where multiple paths share nodes. We apply automatic differentiation (AD) to these implicit performance models, and develop a methodology for sensitivity analysis, parameter optimization and trade-off analysis for key wireless protocols. Finally, we provide simulation experiments to evaluate the effectiveness and performance estimation accuracy of the proposed models and methodologies.