Reduced-complexity spectrum-efficient routing in TDMA multihop wireless networks

This paper addresses the problem of finding the route with maximum end-to-end spectral efficiency, under the constraint of equal bandwidth sharing, in multihop wireless networks that use time division multiple access (TDMA). The difficulty of this problem arises from the fact that the associated routing metric is neither isotonic nor monotone, and, thus, it cannot be solved directly using shortest path algorithms. The author has recently presented the first polynomial-time algorithm that solves the problem to exact optimality. This paper presents an alternative algorithm that enjoys a significantly reduced computation time, while still providing provably optimal communication routes. The proposed algorithm relies on the divideand-conquer principle and a modified Bellman-Ford algorithm for widest path computation. Our computational results further illustrate the efficiency of the proposed approach.