Scheduling in Multi-Channel Wireless Networks

Abstract. The availability of multiple orthogonal channels in a wireless network can lead to substantial performance improvement by alleviating contention and interference. However, this also gives rise to non-trivial channel coordination issues. The situation is exacerbated by variability in the achievable datarates across channels and links. Thus, scheduling in such networks may require substantial information-exchange and lead to non-negligible overhead. This provides a strong motivation for the study of scheduling algorithms that can operate with limited information while still providing acceptable worst-case performance guarantees. In this paper, we make an effort in this direction by examining the scheduling implications of multiple channels and heterogeneity in channel-rates. We establish lower bounds on the performance of a class of maximal schedulers. We first demonstrate that when the underlying scheduling mechanism is “imperfect”, the presence of multiple orthogonal cha...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ICDCN
• Authors: Vartika Bhandari, Nitin H. Vaidya
• Keywords: Distributed Computing, ICDCN 2010, Multiple Orthogonal Channels, Performance, Substantial Performance Improvement