On Optimal MAC Scheduling With Physical Interference

Yung Yi, Gustavo de Veciana, Sanjay Shakkottai

Abstract: We propose a general family of MAC scheduling algorithms that achieve any rate-point on a uniform discrete-lattice within the throughput-region (i.e., lattice-throughput-optimal) under a physical interference model. Under the physical interference model, a centralized algorithm requires information on node locations (and distance among nodes) to determine a schedule that is provably throughput-optimal. In this paper, we propose a distributed, synchronous contention-based scheduling algorithm that (i) is lattice-throughput-optimal, (ii) does not require node location information, and (iii) has a signaling complexity that does not depend on network size. Thus, it is amenable to simple implementation, and is robust to network dynamics such as topology and load changes.