An efficient method for hop selection and capacity enhancement in multi-hop wireless ad-hoc networks

In this paper we propose an approach with reduced complexity for the optimization of a multi-hop transmission path through a wireless network. Based on the assumption that nodes use successive interference cancellation (SIC) and maximal ratio combining (MRC) to deal with mutual interference and to utilize all the received signal energy, we first derive the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) expression for each node. Then we show that under mild conditions the maximum capacity for an H-hop path can be found by a max-min optimization on the line connecting the source and destination nodes. A simple algorithm is then proposed to select the best hop nodes for enhancing capacity. The complexity of the algorithm is controllable, and can be made low enough for large network sizes. Extensive simulations are conducted to demonstrate its performance.