Minimizing Interferences in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks through Topology Control

This paper investigates minimizing mutual interferences in wireless ad hoc networks by means of topology control. Prior work defines interference as a relationship between link and node. This paper attempts to capture the physical situation more realistically by defining interference as a relationship between link and link. We formulate the pair-wise interference condition between two links, and show that the interference conditions for the minimum-transmit-power strategy and the equal-transmit-power strategy are equivalent. Based on the pair-wise definition, we further investigate the "typical" interference relationship between a link and all other links in its surrounding. To characterize the extent of the interference between a link and its surrounding links, we define a new metric called the interference coefficient. We investigate the property of interference coefficient in detail by means of analysis and simulation. Based on the insight obtained, we propose a topology control algorithm - minimum interference algorithm (MIA) - to minimize the overall network interference. Simulation results indicate that the network topologies produced by MIA show good performance in terms of network interference and spanner property compared with known algorithms such as LIFE, Gabriel Graph and k-NEIGH.