Biased Backpressure Routing for Multihop Wireless Networks with Heterogeneous Interfaces

2026-09-05

Abstract

Heterogeneous-interface multihop wireless networks (Het-MuNets) are emerging as a promising paradigm for tactical networks and for infrastructure-light applications such as vehicular communications, wireless backhaul, and non-terrestrial connectivity. To exploit the diverse profiles of heterogeneous communication technologies in penetration, interference, and bandwidth, packet-to-interface assignment must be determined on a per-hop basis, making routing and scheduling highly complex. In this work, we develop a unified framework for joint packet routing, link scheduling, and interface assignment in Het-MuNets with multiple concurrent flows. By modeling packet-to-interface assignment as transmission between virtual subnodes, we transform interface assignment into intra-device virtual routing, which is solved jointly with physical routing and scheduling under a unified multi-layer shortest path-biased Backpressure (SP-BP) scheme. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms SP-BP operating on other baseline graph models and non-backpressure routing schemes in goodput, latency, and packet delivery rate.

Problem

• Heterogeneous Interfaces
• Multihop Wireless Networks
• Routing and Scheduling Complexity

Innovation

• Heterogeneous Interfaces
• Virtual Subnodes
• Unified Framework
• Shortest Path-biased Backpressure (SP-BP)