Distributed Spectrum-Efcient Routing Algorithms in Wireless Networks

This paper applies spectral efciency as a performance measure for routing schemes and considers how to obtain a good route in a wireless network. The objective for this study is to combine different perspectives from networking and information theory in the design of routing schemes. The problem of nding the optimum route with the maximum spectral efciency is difcult to solve in a distributed fashion. Motivated by an information-theoretic analysis, this paper proposes two suboptimal alternatives, namely, the approximatelyideal-path routing (AIPR) scheme and the distributed spectrumefcient routing (DSER) scheme. AIPR nds a path to approximate an optimum regular path and requires location information. DSER is more amenable to distributed implementations based on the Bellman-Ford or Dijkstra’s algorithms. The spectral efciencies of AIPR and DSER for random networks approach that of nearest-neighbor routing in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime and that of single-hop routing in the high SNR regime. In the moderate SNR regime, the spectral efciency of DSER is up to twice that of nearest-neighbor or single-hop routing.