Optimal Scheduling in Interference Limited Fading Wireless Networks

We consider the problem of minimum-length scheduling of point-to-point links in a spatial TDMA (STDMA) based wireless network with Rayleigh fading of both desired and interference signals. The problem formulation integrates the activation of multiple sets of links in the network, while taking into account their explicit statistical variations. We assume uniform (fixed) transmission power at all nodes and propose an algorithm based on a column generation approach, which takes into consideration the signal-to-interference and noise ratio (SINR) constraints at the receivers in order to generate a link schedule that minimizes the schedule length. For the formulated problem, we show that this column generation based approach can converge to a globally optimal solution.