Achievable rate region and optimality of multi-hop wireless 802.11-scheduled networks

Abstract

This paper describes a methodology to find the achievable rate region for any static wireless multi-hop network with 802.11 scheduling. To do so, we first characterize the achievable edge-rate region, that is, the set of edge rates that are achievable on the given topology. This requires a careful consideration of the inter-dependence among nearby edges, since neighboring edges collide with and affect the idle time perceived by the edge under study. We use our results to study the optimality of IEEE 802.11 scheduling by comparing the achievable rate region of IEEE 802.11 and optimal scheduling for different scenarios and find that 802.11 is able to achieve more than 80% of the throughput as compared to optimal scheduling for all the scenarios considered. To explain this result, we then characterize the local topologies for which 802.11 scheduling results in a significant drop in throughput as compared to optimal scheduling.