Performance of Random Access Scheduling Schemes in Multi-hop Wireless Networks

The performance of scheduling schemes in multi- hop wireless networks has attracted significant attention in the recent literature. It is well known that optimal scheduling solutions require centralized information and lead to impractical implementations due to their enormous complexity (high-degree polynomial or NP-hard, depending on the interference scenario). Further, an important characteristic in many multi-hop scenarios is the need for distributed algorithms that operate on local information. Thus, in this paper we develop a constant-time random access distributed algorithm for scheduling in multi- hop wireless networks. An important feature of this scheme is that it achieves a 2-approximation efficiency ratio and can be implemented in an entirely distributed manner with low overhead.