Fast and simple approximation algorithms for maximum weighted independent set of links

Finding a maximum-weighted independent set of links is a fundamental problem in wireless networking and has broad applications in various wireless link scheduling problems. Under protocol interference model, it is NP-hard even when all nodes have uniform (and fixed) interference radii and the positions of all nodes are available. On one hand, it admits a polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS). In other words, for any fixed ε > 0, it has a polynomial-time (depending on ε) (1 + ε)-approximation algorithm. However, such PTAS is of theoretical interest only and is quite infeasible practically. On the other hand, only with the uniform interference radii is a simple (greedy) constant-approximation algorithm known. For the arbitrary interference radii, fast constant-approximation algorithms are still missing. In this paper, we present a number of fast and simple approximation algorithms under the general protocol interference model. When applied to the plane geometric variants of the protocol interference model, these algorithms produce constant-approximate solutions efficiently.