Min-Max Congestion in Interference-Prone Wireless Mesh Networks

Users´ demand of seamless connectivity has pushed for the development of alternatives to traditional infrastructure networks. Potential solutions should be low-cost, easily deployable and adaptive to the environment. One approach that has gained tremendous attention over the past few years consists in deploying a backbone of access points wirelessly interconnected, offering users access to the wired infrastructure via multi-hop communication. However, the limited transfer capacities and the interference resulting from a shared transmission medium can prevent further deployment if the network performance does not meet users´ expectations. In this work, we explore different ways to improve the nominal network capacity while accounting for the phenomena of intra-interference (interference on a single path) and inter-interference (interference among flows on different paths). In particular, under the assumptions of splitable traffic flows, we present an interference-aware linear- programming formulation of the min-max congestion problem with and without constraints on the path length. Finally, we evaluate via simulations the potential bandwidth capacity gain resulting from the implementation of these different approaches.