Towards minimizing delay in MHWN based on activity estimation

Delay is a critical QoS performance metric for Multi-hop Wireless Network (MHWN). It is well known that schemes that give a higher data rate to the link with larger queue length can achieve high throughput performance. However, this queue-length-based approach may potentially suffer from large (even infinite) packet delays due to the subsequent contention problem caused by the next-hop arriving packets. In this paper, we present a novel method for minimizing multi-hop transmission delay by optimally setting the data rate along a selected path in MHWN based on multi-hop activity aware delay analysis. We develop an analytic model that enables us to obtain closed form expressions for delay in terms of multi-hop activity variables. Then a measuring deviation algorithm is used to derive the number of saturated nodes over a given set of topology. Numerical results and simulations are presented for different network load scenarios and compared with traditional studies.