Virtual gradient based back-pressure scheduling in wireless multi-hop networks

In this paper, we study how to effectively reduce the average end-to-end (E2E) packet delay in backpressure based scheduling in wireless multi-hop networks. We accordingly propose a virtual gradient based back-pressure scheduling algorithm, referred to as VBR. In VBR, intentional virtual queue, whose length (called virtual gradient) depends on the distance to destination, is first built at nodes in a network in the network configuration phase. In this way, virtual gradient is established at nodes in the network. In the network operation phase, the scheduling decision at each node needs to jointly consider both real queue length and virtual queue length. Simulation results show that VBR can obtain significant performance improvement on back-pressure based routing and scheduling, in terms of packet delivery ratio and average E2E delay.