A robust interference model for wireless ad-hoc networks

Among the foremost goals of topology control in wireless ad-hoc networks is interference reduction. This paper presents a receiver-centric interference model featuring two main advantages over previous work. First, it reflects the fact that interference occurs at the intended receiver of a message. Second, the presented interference measure is robust with respect to addition or removal of single network nodes. Regarding both of these aspects our model intuitively corresponds to the behavior of interference in reality. Based on this interference model, we show that currently known topology control algorithms poorly reduce interference. Motivated by the observation that already one-dimensional network instances display the intricacy of the considered problem, we continue to focus on the so-called highway model. Setting out to analyze the special case of the exponential node chain, we eventually describe an algorithm guaranteeing to achieve a &nthroot;Δ-approximation (where n=4) of the optimal connectivity-preserving topology in the general highway model.