Throughput-Optimal Broadcast on Directed Acyclic Graphs

We study the problem of broadcasting packets in wireless networks. At each time slot, a network controller activates non-interfering links and forwards packets to all nodes at a common rate; the maximum rate is referred to as the broadcast capacity of the wireless network. Existing policies achieve the broadcast capacity by balancing traffic over a set of spanning trees, which are difficult to maintain in a large and time-varying wireless network. We propose a new dynamic algorithm that achieves the broadcast capacity when the underlying network topology is a directed acyclic graph (DAG). This algorithm utilizes local queue-length information, does not use any global topological structures such as spanning trees, and uses the idea of in-order packet delivery to all network nodes. Although the in-order packet delivery constraint leads to degraded throughput in cyclic graphs, we show that it is throughput optimal in DAGs and can be exploited to simplify the design and analysis of optimal algorithms. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has superior delay performance as compared to tree-based approaches.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of INFOCOM, 201

Throughput-optimal multi-hop broadcast algorithms

In this paper we design throughput-optimal dynamic broadcast algorithms for multi-hop networks with arbitrary topologies. Most of the previous broadcast algorithms route packets along spanning trees, rooted at the source node. For large time-varying networks, computing and maintaining a set of spanning trees is not efficient, as the network-topology may change frequently. In this paper we design a class of dynamic algorithms which make packet-by-packet scheduling and routing decisions and hence, obviate the need for maintaining any global topological structures, such as spanning trees. Our algorithms may be conveniently understood as a non-trivial generalization of the familiar back-pressure algorithm, which makes unicast packet routing and scheduling decisions, based on local queue-length information and does not require to maintain end-to-end paths. However, in the broadcast setting, due to packet duplications, it is hard to define appropriate queuing structures. We design and prove the optimality of a virtual-queue based algorithm, where virtual-queues are defined for subsets of nodes. We then propose a multi-class broadcast policy which combines the above scheduling algorithm with in-class-in-order packet forwarding, resulting in significant reduction in complexity. Finally, we evaluate performance of the proposed algorithms via extensive numerical simulations

Optimal Control for Generalized Network-Flow Problems

We consider the problem of throughput-optimal packet dissemination, in the presence of an arbitrary mix of unicast, broadcast, multicast, and anycast traffic, in an arbitrary wireless network. We propose an online dynamic policy, called Universal Max-Weight (UMW), which solves the problem efficiently. To the best of our knowledge, UMW is the first known throughput-optimal policy of such versatility in the context of generalized network flow problems. Conceptually, the UMW policy is derived by relaxing the precedence constraints associated with multi-hop routing and then solving a min-cost routing and max-weight scheduling problem on a virtual network of queues. When specialized to the unicast setting, the UMW policy yields a throughput-optimal cycle-free routing and link scheduling policy. This is in contrast with the well-known throughput-optimal back-pressure (BP) policy which allows for packet cycling, resulting in excessive latency. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed UMW policy incurs a substantially smaller delay as compared with the BP policy. The proof of throughput-optimality of the UMW policy combines ideas from the stochastic Lyapunov theory with a sample path argument from adversarial queueing theory and may be of independent theoretical interest