Energy and Throughput Optimization of Wireless Mesh Network with Continuous Power Control

Providing high data rate with minimum energy consumption is a crucial challenge for next generation wireless networks. This paper focuses on wireless mesh networks using a MAC layer based on S-TDMA (Spatial Time Division Multiple Access). We investigate on the optimization issues combining throughput and energy consumption. Our contributions are two-fold. First, we formulate and solve using column generation a new MILP to compute the energy-throughput tradeoff curve under a physical interference model when the nodes can perform continuous power control and can use a discrete set of data rates. Second, we highlight some network engineering insights. In particular, we show that power control and multi-rate functionalities allow to reach optimal throughput with lower energy consumption using a mix of single hop and multi-hop routes

Energy and Throughput Optimization of Wireless Mesh Networks with Continuous Power Control

International audience—Providing high data rates with minimum energy consumption is a crucial challenge for next generation wireless networks. There are few papers in the literature which combine these two issues. This paper focuses on multi-hop wireless mesh networks using a MAC layer based on S-TDMA (Spatial Time Di-vision Multiple Access). We develop an optimization framework based on linear programming to study the relationship between throughput and energy consumption. Our contributions are two-fold. First, we formulate and solve, using column generation, a new MILP to compute offline energy-throughput tradeoff curve. We use a physical interference model where the nodes can perform continuous power control and can use a discrete set of data rates. Second, we highlight network engineering insights. We show, via numerical results, that power control and multi-rate functionalities allow optimal throughput to be reached, with lower energy consumption, using a mix of single hop and multi-hop routes

Design of Ad Hoc Wireless Mesh Networks Formed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Advanced Mechanical Automation

Ad hoc wireless mesh networks formed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with wireless transceivers (access points (APs)) are increasingly being touted as being able to provide a flexible "on-the-fly" communications infrastructure that can collect and transmit sensor data from sensors in remote, wilderness, or disaster-hit areas. Recent advances in the mechanical automation of UAVs have resulted in separable APs and replaceable batteries that can be carried by UAVs and placed at arbitrary locations in the field. These advanced mechanized UAV mesh networks pose interesting questions in terms of the design of the network architecture and the optimal UAV scheduling algorithms. This paper studies a range of network architectures that depend on the mechanized automation (AP separation and battery replacement) capabilities of UAVs and proposes heuristic UAV scheduling algorithms for each network architecture, which are benchmarked against optimal designs.Comment: 12 page