Using flow cost to globally allocate and optimize limited bandwidth in multipath routing

This paper studies a globally-aware optimization scheme for the allocation of limited bandwidth in a wireless ad hoc network using multipath routing. We assign a FC (Flow Cost) as a function of end-to-end delay, power consumption and hop distance so that we can select the best subset of multiple paths. Using the FC allows us to consider not only the current local transmission, but also any global transmissions from other parts of the network that converge at a CN (Crowded Node), hence providing an effective bandwidth allocation scheme for our multipath routing. In order to improve the routing discovery efficiency, we have proposed the HCZ (Half-Circle Zone) scheme along with node-disjoint sorting to cut down the size of the RPT (Routing Path Table). Utilization factor is also used in the objective function of the optimization in order to take queueing performance into account. Some allocation evaluation by AIMMS (Advanced Integrated Multidimensional Modeling Software) is provided to demonstrate the capability of this algorithm. Implementation, simulation and performance evaluations/comparisons in Opnet 14.5 have been carried out based on the optimization results.