Throughput guarantees through maximal scheduling in wireless networks

Abstract

We address the question of providing throughput guarantees through distributed scheduling, which has remained an open problem for some time. We consider a simple distributed scheduling strategy, maximal scheduling, and prove that it attains a guaranteed fraction of the maximum throughput region in arbitrary wireless networks. The guaranteed fraction depends on “interference degree ” of the network which is the maximum number of sessions that interfere with any given session in the network and do not interfere with each other. Depending on the nature of communication, the transmission powers and the propagation models, the guaranteed fraction can be lower bounded by the maximum link degrees in the underlying topology, or even by constants that are independent of the topology. The guarantees also hold in networks with arbitrary number of frequencies. We prove that the guarantees are tight in that they can not be improved any further with maximal scheduling. I.