An Optimal Power Control Algorithm for S T DM A MA C Protocols in Multihop Wireless Networks
Abstract: Multihop spatial time division multiple access (STDMA) medium access control (MAC) protocols constitute an important building block of wireless networks. There are not many practical power control algorithms that can optimally tradeoff power consumption against transmission rates with a reasonable computational complexity. In this paper, we introduce an energy-efficient distributed power control algorithm for STDMA MAC protocols. The motivation for this study is two fold, namely, maximizing the spatial reuse of the system resources and maximizing power efficiency. We develop a mathematical formulation for maximizing spatial reuse and power efficiency under discrete SINR and rate constrains. After proving that power is a convex function of data rates in our problem, we demonstrate that our problem in simultaneous transmission environments can be reduced to a linear programming (LP) problem. Then, we solve this LP problem using dynamic programming (DP). Finally, based on our proposed solution, we propose a low complexity optimal power control (OPC) algorithm which can be generically embedded within any existing STDMA MAC protocol. Through analytical and experimental studies, we show that our power control algorithm cannot only significantly improve the throughput, power consumption, and delay performance of STDMA MAC protocols compared to their baseline alternatives, but also outperform existing STDMA algorithms.