Interference-aware routing in multihop wireless networks using directional antennas

Recent research has shown that interference can make a significant impact on the performance of multihop wireless networks. Researchers have studied interference-aware topology control recently [M. Burkhart et al., 2004]. In this paper, we study routing problems in a multihop wireless network using directional antennas with dynamic traffic. We present new definitions of link and path interference that are suitable for designing better routing algorithms. We then formulate and optimally solve two power constrained minimum interference single path routing problems. Routing along paths found by our interference-aware algorithms tends to have less channel collisions and higher network throughput. Our simulation results show that, compared with the minimum power path routing algorithm, our algorithms can reduce average path interference by 40% or more at the cost of a minor power increase. We also extend our work towards survivable routing by formulating and solving the power constrained minimum interference node-disjoint path routing problem.