Delay throughput tradeoffs in wireless mesh networks

The support of delay-sensitive applications like VoIP, video conferencing, video streaming, etc. on scheduled mesh networks requires careful configuration of routing and scheduling. We formulate a delay-optimal joint routing and scheduling optimization problem that minimizes the maximum average delay perceived by any flow under the physical interference model. Due to the non-convex nature of this proposed problem, we cannot find the globally optimal joint routing and scheduling that minimizes the maximum per flow average delay. We overcome this issue by fixing the routing which makes the problem convex and then compute the optimal scheduling that results in minimum delay. We investigate several different routing strategies and compare the per flow average min-max delay when the scheduling is computed optimally. Based on these results, we provide engineering insights on configuring a wireless network for delay-sensitive applications.