Enabling Adaptive Traffic Scheduling in Asynchronous Multihop Wireless Networks

Introduction This abstract describes work-in-progress developing a communication framework that is well attuned to the resource limitations and dynamic nature of the wireless multihop networking environment. The proposed approach is interesting because it is provides a completely localized, adaptive solution. In particular, there is no requirement for synchronization, clustering or shared control elements. These characteristics are especially important in the multihop wireless environment, which has the unique problem that disjoint flows -- despite having no nodes in common -- interfere with each other. The framework is based on a simple CSMA underlayer and a lightweight power saving mechanism. The power saving protocol establishes local sleepwake schedules that reduce nodes' energy consumption. These schedules also implicitly create high level transmission schedules defined by the intervals during which pairs of communicating nodes are both awake. We believe that the timing of thes