Integration of scheduling and network coding in multi-rate wireless mesh networks: Optimization models and algorithms

In order to fully utilize spectrum resource in wireless mesh networks (WMNs), we propose a combination of some popular communication techniques, including link scheduling, spatial reuse, power and rate adaptation and network coding (NC), to activate as many transmission links as possible during one scheduling period, so that the total scheduling length can be minimized and network throughput can be maximized. Different from previous studies, we consider the interplay among these techniques and present an optimal NC-aware link scheduling mechanism in multi-rate WMNs, which relies on the enumeration of all possible schedules. Due to the high computational complexity of our proposed model, we utilize a column generation (CG)-based method to resolve the optimization problem and decompose it into a master problem (MP) and a pricing problem (PP). Furthermore, we present a distributed power control algorithm for PP, by which the computational complexity of the CG-based scheme can be largely reduced. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of our method under various network situations.