Optimum Integrated Link Scheduling and Power Control for Multihop Wireless Networks

In this paper, a new mathematical programming formulation is developed for minimizing the schedule length in multihop wireless networks based on the optimal joint scheduling of transmissions across multi-access communication links and the allocation of transmit power levels while meeting the requirements on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio at intended receivers. The authors prove that the problem can be represented as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) and show that the latter yields a solution that consists of transmit power levels that are "strongly Pareto optimal". It was demonstrated that the MILP formulation can be used effectively to derive optimal scheduling and power levels for networks with as many as 30 designated communication links. The authors show that the MILP formulation can also be effectively solved to provide upper and lower bounds (corresponding to an approximation factor Delta) for the optimum schedule length of networks with as many as 100 designated links. It is proved that the integrated link scheduling and power control problem (ILSP) is NP-complete. Consequently, a heuristic algorithm of polynomial complexity is developed and investigated for solving the problem in a timely and practical manner. The algorithm is based on the properties of a novel interference graph, i.e., the "generalized power-based interference graph", whose "chromatic" and "independence numbers" provide fundamental bounds for the ILSP. It is demonstrated that the frame length of schedules realized by the heuristic scheme resides in the 25th percentile of those attained by the optimal mechanism for randomly generated topologies with as many as 30 designated communication links. Furthermore, it is shown that the algorithm significantly outperforms a corresponding algorithm presented in the literature