Efficient multi-objective optimization of wireless network problems on wireless testbeds

A large amount of research focuses on experimentally optimizing performance of wireless solutions. Finding the optimal performance settings typically requires investigating all possible combinations of design parameters, while the number of required experiments increases exponentially for each considered design parameter. The aim of this paper is to analyze the applicability of global optimization techniques to reduce the optimization time of wireless experimentation. In particular, the paper applies the Efficient Global Optimization (EGO) algorithm implemented in the SUrrogate MOdeling (SUMO) toolbox inside a wireless testbed. The proposed techniques are implemented and evaluated in a wireless testbed using a realistic wireless conference network problem. The performance accuracy and experimentation time of an exhaustively searched experiment is compared against a SUMO optimized experiment. In our proof of concept, the proposed SUMO optimizer reaches 99.51% of the global optimum performance while requiring 10 times less experiments compared to the exhaustive search experiment.