Maximum Flow Routing in Multihop Wireless Networks

Path selection in multihop wireless networks is a hard problem. Given a performance goal, the best approach remains unclear. In hardwired networks, network flow may be maximized by using shortest path over link weights that are determined by a linear program to a multicommodity flow formulation. In this poster we generalize this linear program to include interference and mobility. We show that "In a static wireless multihop network If we route packets using any other algorithm than shortest path with links weights determined by the solution of the dual problem of maximizing the minimum spare capacity after adding the interference constraints, then the network flow saturates before reaching the maximum when we increase the demands; while we can always increase demands until we reach the maximum flow supported by the network, if we use shortest path with links weights determined as stated above. The same is true for mobile wireless multi-hop networks under protocol interference model if nodes are available within each other transmission, interference ranges within constant probabilities".