Distributed Fair Resource Allocation Algorithm in Wireless Multihop Network Systems

Abstract

Fair resource allocation in a wireless multihop (MH) network is very important for ensuring high bandwidth reuse and high end-to-end throughput without a bottle-neck problem. However, it is very challenging because the available bandwidth for a node in wireless MH networks is limited by both the number of neighboring nodes and their geographic locations, which are always changeable due to users' mobility. To address this problem, we propose a distributed resource allocation algorithm that enables collision-free and fair resource allocation among neighbors within two-hop distance. In the proposed algorithm, each node has a phase that linearly increases from 0 to 1 with a period of 1, and shares the phase information with its one- and two-hop neighbors. The shared phase information is used for distributed fair resource allocation for each node in a time division multiple access (TDMA) based network. We elaborate various characteristics of the proposed algorithm attributed to the MH properties. The necessary condition to ensure stability of the proposed algorithm is derived and analytically proved. Simulation results verify the stability of the proposed algorithm under various scenarios, and show faster convergence and higher bandwidth reuse compared to a comparison algorithm.