Link-Sharing Backpressure Routing In Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

2025-12-10

AI Summary

Traditional backpressure routing in wireless multihop networks suffers from slow convergence, random-walk behavior, the “last-packet problem,” and low bandwidth utilization. To address these issues, this paper redefines the link-sharing mechanism based on Lyapunov drift theory and proposes, for the first time, a distributed Maximum Utility (MaxU) link-sharing strategy that requires no additional signaling overhead—thereby departing from conventional exclusive commodity-selection paradigms. By integrating shortest-path biasing (SP-BP) with distributed resource allocation, the proposed approach significantly mitigates the last-packet problem, strictly expands the network capacity region (with theoretically provable, albeit modest, gains), and guarantees queue stability under fully distributed implementation.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Content-based information diffusion
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Backpressure (BP) routing and scheduling is an established resource allocation method for wireless multi-hop networks, noted for its fully distributed operation and maximum queue stability. Recent advances in shortest path-biased BP routing (SP-BP) mitigate shortcomings such as slow startup and random walks, yet exclusive link-level commodity selection still causes last-packet problem and bandwidth underutilization. By revisiting the Lyapunov drift theory underlying BP, we show that the legacy exclusive commodity selection is unnecessary, and propose a Maximum Utility (MaxU) link-sharing method to expand its performance envelope without increasing control message overhead. Numerical results show that MaxU SP-BP substantially mitigates the last-packet problem and slightly expands the network capacity region.

Problem

• Addresses last-packet problem in backpressure routing
• Improves bandwidth utilization in wireless multi-hop networks
• Enhances network capacity without extra control overhead

Innovation

• Link-sharing method replaces exclusive commodity selection
• Maximum Utility (MaxU) expands performance without overhead increase
• Lyapunov drift theory enables shared commodity selection