Tradeoff between fairness and throughput in multi-hop wireless LAN

Maximizing the throughput of a network while supporting fairness among nodes is one of the most critical issues in designing wireless networks. In single-hop networks, a lot of schemes have been proposed to satisfy this criterion, and efficient protocols like the IEEE 802.11 and the HiperLAN/2 standards have been established for wireless LAN. In multi-hop wireless networks, however, throughput and fairness have different characteristics from those of single-hop networks. In this paper, the tradeoff between throughput and fairness on multi-hop networks is studied by computer simulation, assuming three node distribution models, namely, normal, constant, and uniform distribution and four different bandwidth (channel) scheduling methods, i.e., first-in first-out buffer based, weighted traffic model based, bandwidth reservation based, and maximum throughput based scheduling. Furthermore, as a realistic model, a hybrid scheme is investigated where partial bandwidth is allocated to the bandwidth reservation based scheduling and the remaining to the maximum throughput based one.