Stable Wireless Network Control Under Service Constraints

Abstract: We consider the design of wireless queueing network control policies with particular focus on combining stability with additional application-dependent requirements. Thereby, we consequently pursue a cost function based approach that provides the flexibility to incorporate constraints and requirements of particular services or applications. As typical examples of such requirements, we consider the reduction of buffer underflows in case of streaming traffic, and energy efficiency in networks of battery powered nodes. Compared to the classical throughput optimal control problem, such requirements significantly complicate the control problem. We provide easily verifyable theoretical conditions for stability, and, additionally, compare various candidate cost functions applied to wireless networks with streaming media traffic. Moreover, we demonstrate how the framework can be applied to the problem of energy efficient routing, and we demonstrate the aplication of our framework in cross-layer control problems for wireless multihop networks, using an advanced power control scheme for interference mitigation, based on successive convex approximation. In all scenarios, the performance of our control framework is evaluated using extensive numerical simulations.