An overarching issue in resource management of wireless networks is assessing their capacity: How much communication can be achieved in a network, utilizing all the tools available: power control, scheduling, routing, channel assignment and rate adjustment? We propose the first framework for approximation algorithms in the physical model of wireless interference that addresses these questions in full. The approximations obtained are at most doubly logarithmic in the link length and rate diversity. Where previous bounds are known, this gives an exponential improvement (or better). A key contribution is showing that the complex interference relationship of the physical model can be simplified, at a small cost, into a novel type of amenable conflict graphs. We also show that the approximation obtained is provably the best possible for any conflict graph formulation.
Algorithms for the graph-based variants of flow routing and scheduling problems have initially been addressed in @cite_52 @cite_54 @cite_26 @cite_45 @cite_31 , among others. Algorithms (based on the primal-dual method) with performance guarantees in terms of inductive independence are presented in @cite_31 . Algorithms with performance guarantees for the graph-based variant of combinatorial auctions are presented in @cite_48 @cite_5 . Those works also present algorithms for the SINR model, with an extra @math approximation factor. Many problems become easier in the regime of linear power assignments, and constant factor approximations are known for @cite_40 @cite_47 and TDMA link scheduling @cite_0 @cite_35 .
@cite_35 @cite_47 @cite_26 @cite_48 @cite_54 @cite_52 @cite_0 @cite_40 @cite_45 @cite_5 @cite_31
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This paper deals with the design of efficiently computable incentive-compatible mechanisms for combinatorial optimization problems with single-minded agents each possibly having multiple private parameters. We focus on approximation algorithms for NP-hard mechanism design problems. These algorithms need to satisfy certain monotonicity properties to ensure truthfulness. Since most of the known approximation techniques do not fulfill these properties, we study alternative techniques. Our first contribution is a quite general method to transform a pseudopolynomial algorithm into a monotone fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS). This can be applied to various problems like, e.g., knapsack, constrained shortest path, or job scheduling with deadlines. For example, the monotone FPTAS for the knapsack problem gives a very efficient, truthful mechanism for single-minded multiunit auctions. The best previous result for such auctions was a 2-appro-xi-ma-tion. In addition, we present a monotone PTAS for the generalized assignment problem with any constant number of private parameters per agent. The most efficient way to solve packing integer programs (PIPs) is linear programming-based randomized rounding, which also is in general not monotone. We show that primal-dual greedy algorithms achieve almost the same approximation ratios for PIPs as randomized rounding. The advantage is that these algorithms are inherently monotone. This way, we can significantly improve the approximation ratios of truthful mechanisms for various fundamental mechanism design problems like single-minded combinatorial auctions (CAs), unsplittable flow routing, and multicast routing. Our primal-dual approximation algorithms can also be used for the winner determination in CAs with general bidders specifying their bids through an oracle. We give algorithms with constant-factor performance guarantees for several capacity and throughput problems in the SINR model. The algorithms are all based on a novel LP formulation for capacity problems. First, we give a new constant-factor approximation algorithm for selecting the maximum subset of links that can be scheduled simultaneously, under any non-decreasing and sublinear power assignment. For the case of uniform power, we extend this to the case of variable QoS requirements and link-dependent noise terms. Second, we approximate a problem related to cognitive radio: find a maximum set of links that can be simultaneously scheduled without affecting a given set of previously assigned links. Finally, we obtain constant-factor approximation of weighted capacity under linear power assignment. This paper deals with the design of efficiently computable incentive compatible, or truthful, mechanisms for combinatorial optimization problems with multi-parameter agents. We focus on approximation algorithms for NP-hard mechanism design problems. These algorithms need to satisfy certain monotonicity properties to ensure truthfulness. Since most of the known approximation techniques do not fulfill these properties, we study alternative techniques.Our first contribution is a quite general method to transform a pseudopolynomial algorithm into a monotone FPTAS. This can be applied to various problems like, e.g., knapsack, constrained shortest path, or job scheduling with deadlines. For example, the monotone FPTAS for the knapsack problem gives a very efficient, truthful mechanism for single-minded multi-unit auctions. The best previous result for such auctions was a 2-approximation. In addition, we present a monotone PTAS for the generalized assignment problem with any bounded number of parameters per agent.The most efficient way to solve packing integer programs (PIPs) is LP-based randomized rounding, which also is in general not monotone. We show that primal-dual greedy algorithms achieve almost the same approximation ratios for PIPs as randomized rounding. The advantage is that these algorithms are inherently monotone. This way, we can significantly improve the approximation ratios of truthful mechanisms for various fundamental mechanism design problems like single-minded combinatorial auctions (CAs), unsplittable flow routing and multicast routing. Our approximation algorithms can also be used for the winner determination in CAs with general bidders specifying their bids through an oracle. In this work we study the problem of determining the throughput capacity of a wireless network. We propose a scheduling algorithm to achieve this capacity within an approximation factor. Our analysis is performed in the physical interference model, where nodes are arbitrarily distributed in Euclidean space. We consider the problem separately from the routing problem and the power control problem, i.e., all requests are single-hop, and all nodes transmit at a fixed power level. The existing solutions to this problem have either concentrated on special-case topologies, or presented optimality guarantees which become arbitrarily bad (linear in the number of nodes) depending on the network's topology. We propose the first scheduling algorithm with approximation guarantee independent of the topology of the network. The algorithm has a constant approximation guarantee for the problem of maximizing the number of links scheduled in one time-slot. Furthermore, we obtain a O(log n) approximation for the problem of minimizing the number of time slots needed to schedule a given set of requests. Simulation results indicate that our algorithm does not only have an exponentially better approximation ratio in theory, but also achieves superior performance in various practical network scenarios. Furthermore, we prove that the analysis of the algorithm is extendable to higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces, and to more realistic bounded-distortion spaces, induced by non-isotropic signal distortions. Finally, we show that it is NP-hard to approximate the scheduling problem to within n 1-epsiv factor, for any constant epsiv > 0, in the non-geometric SINR model, in which path-loss is independent of the Euclidean coordinates of the nodes.