Distributed Transmit Power Control for Maximizing End-to-End Throughput in Wireless Multi-hop Networks

Abstract

Wireless multi-hop networks have a solidarity property, in which each multi-hop link interferes mutually and so an increase in one link's rate results in a decrease of the other links' rate. In a multi-hop link, the end-to-end throughput between a source and destination is restricted by the lowest link rate, so the max-min fair allocation on the link rates is an optimal strategy to maximize the end-to-end throughput. In this paper, we verify that if the wireless links have a solidarity property, the max-min fair allocation has all link rates equal, so we propose a transmit power control (TPC) algorithm that decides the transmit power of multi-hop nodes to equalize all link rates. The proposed algorithm operates in a distributed manner, where each node averages the recognized link rates around itself, allocates its transmit power to achieve this average rate, and iterates this operation until all link rates become equal. Intensive simulation shows that the proposed TPC algorithm enables all link rates to converge on the same value, and thus maximizes the multi-hop end-to-end throughput while decreasing the power consumption of multi-hop nodes.