A Distributed Joint Channel-Assignment, Scheduling and Routing Algorithm for Multi-Channel Ad-hoc Wireless Networks

The capacity of ad hoc wireless networks can be substantially increased by equipping each network node with multiple radio interfaces that can operate on multiple non-overlapping channels. However, new scheduling, channel-assignment, and routing algorithms are required to fully utilize the increased bandwidth in multi-channel multi-radio ad hoc networks. In this paper, we develop a fully distributed algorithm that jointly solves the channel-assignment, scheduling and routing problem. Our algorithm is an online algorithm, i.e., it does not require prior information on the offered load to the network, and can adapt automatically to the changes in the network topology and offered load. We show that our algorithm is provably efficient. That is, even compared with the optimal centralized and offline algorithm, our proposed distributed algorithm can achieve a provable fraction of the maximum system capacity. Further, the achievable fraction that we can guarantee is larger than that of some other comparable algorithms in the literature.