Price-based Max-Min Fair Rate Allocation in Wireless Multi-hop Networks

When allocating rates in wireless multi-hop networks, one difficulty comes from the so-called MAC (media access control) constraint. To overcome this difficulty, this paper proposes a price-based max-min fair rate allocation scheme. Unlike existing schemes, our scheme is based on the MaxNet principle using the maximum price of all nodes along a transmission path to control the flow´s rate. Through theoretical analyses and simulation results, we show that the algorithm is able to meet the MAC constraint and to achieve max-min fairness among multi-hop flows in wireless networks even if the topology varies, as is the case in a mobile environment.