Fairness-Oriented Channel-Capacity Distribution in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

Wireless Multi-hop Networks (MUNETs) are emerged as a key technology for network infrastructures. Despite the several advantages of multi-hop networking, the shared medium access represents a major issue for resource distribution in MUNETs. Therefore, the network topology forms an essential point for determining resource distribution in such networks. Although the importance of network topology for resource distribution is well known, none of known studies deeply analyzed the related effects, i.e., no comprehensive concept. In that respect, this paper presents the Fairness-Oriented Capacity Distribution (FOCD) concept for analyzing and providing capacity distribution in relation with the network topology (neighborhood graph). For purpose of simplicity, this paper considers only the time-shared medium access based MUNETs, such as MANETs and VANETs. This work determines the major conditions for channel capacity utilization and defines factors for evaluating the capacity distribution. Accordingly, two main algorithms are introduced and evaluated. The analytical (numerical) results of selected examples show that the topology of such networks totally affects the way the channel capacity can be distributed/assigned on the network nodes. Consequently, the analytical results confirm that the maximized distribution of the channel capacity does not necessarily means distributing the whole capacity on the neighboring nodes, but only the part that enables having (stable) nodes.