A Distributed Algorithm for Interference Aware Routing in Wireless Networks

We can improve the end-to-end throughput between a sender and receiver in a wireless network using multiple paths which do not interfere with each other. Given finding such paths is computationally hard, we present a heuristic that is amenable to distributed implementation. This heuristic allows for the possibility of interfering links but schedules the transmission in ways to achieve the maximum possible throughput. One can characterize interfering links as either destructive or non-destructive, the latter of which does not affect the throughput, if transmission is properly scheduled. We present a distributed algorithm which exploits this knowledge to find multiple s-t paths such that high throughputs could be achieved despite the interference. On a wireless network with n nodes, our distributed algorithm has a time and message complexity of O(n²).