This paper addresses the following optimization problem in a plane multihop wireless networks under the physical interference model: From a given a set of communication links whose senders transmit at a fixed uniform power level, select a maximum set of independent links. This problem is known to be NP-hard. The existing approximation algorithms which were claimed to have constant approximation bounds are either valid only in the absence of background noise or simply incorrect in the presence of background noise. In this paper, we develop a new approximation algorithm with constant approximation bound regardless of the value of the background noise. In addition, our approximation bound valid in general is significantly smaller than all the known bounds which are only valid under certain special assumptions.
Peng-Jun Wan, Xiaohua Jia, F. Frances Yao