Scheduling and Topology Design in Networks with Directional Antennas

Abstract : AbstractIn multihop wireless networks equipped with directionalantennas, network controllers must choose which pairs ofnodes should communicate in order to establish a topology overwhich traffic can be sent. Additionally, because of interferenceconstraints, conflicting transmitters must be scheduled to transmitin time-separated intervals. In this work, we examine theinteracting effects of topology design and transmission schedulingin wireless networks, in particular focusing on networks wherenodes are divided into geographically localized groups. Herein,it is shown that in order to maximize network throughput,transmission schedules should be carefully chosen to match thetopology design and traffic patterns. Specifically, we find thatcommonly used, suboptimal schedules can lead to greatly reducednetwork throughput. Results for both unicast and multicasttraffic are examined, and it is found that the type of traffic cansignificantly impact the performance of varying topology andscheduling solutions.