Energy-aware optimal resource allocation in MR-MC wireless networks

Multi-radio multi-channel (MR-MC) networks as a promising technique to enhance the capacity of wireless networks have received a lot of attentions recently. While most of the existing studies focus on capacity optimization, energy-efficient resource allocation for MR-MC networks is an emerging area yet to be exploited. In this paper, we develop an optimization framework for energy-aware optimal resource allocation in MR-MC wireless networks. Our framework is based on a multi-commodity flow (MCF) formulation augmented with constraints developed from a multi-dimensional conflict graph (MDCG). The basic idea is that there normally exist multiple possible resource allocation configurations, i.e., the combinations of routing, channel assignment and scheduling solutions, leading to the same optimal network capacity. Our method can identify the optimal resource allocation with the minimum energy consumption. Numerical results show that our energy-aware resource allocation can considerably improve energy efficiency compared to an energy-blind solution. The amount of saved energy is even more significant with a slight sacrifice of the network capacity.