We consider the problem of allocating resources (time slots, frequency, power, etc.) at a base station to many competing flows, where each flow is intended for a different receiver. The channel conditions may be time-varying and different for different receivers. It is well-known that appropriately chosen queue-length based policies are throughput-optimal while other policies based on the estimation of channel statistics can be used to allocate resources fairly (such as proportional fairness) among competing users. In this paper, we show that a combination of queue-length-based scheduling at the base station and congestion control implemented either at the base station or at the end users can lead to fair resource allocation and queue-length stability.

The Foster-Lyapunov theorem and its variants serve as the primary tools for studying the stability of queueing systems. In addition, it is well known that setting the drift of the Lyapunov function equal to zero in steady-state provides bounds on the expected queue lengths. However, such bounds are often very loose due to the fact that they fail to capture resource pooling effects. The main contribution of this paper is to show that the approach of "setting the drift of a Lyapunov function equal to zero" can be used to obtain bounds on the steady-state queue lengths which are tight in the heavy-traffic limit. The key is to establish an appropriate notion of state-space collapse in terms of steady-state moments of weighted queue length differences, and use this state-space collapse result when setting the Lyapunov drift equal to zero. As an application of the methodology, we prove the steady-state equivalent of the heavy-traffic optimality result of Stolyar for wireless networks operating under the MaxWeight scheduling policy.

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We study the problem of stable scheduling for a class of wireless networks. The goal is to stabilize the queues holding information to be transmitted over a fading channel. Few assumptions are made on the arrival process statistics other than the assumption that their mean values lie within the capacity region and that they satisfy a version of the law of large numbers. We prove that, for any mean arrival rate that lies in the capacity region, the queues will be stable under our policy. Moreover, we show that it is easy to incorporate imperfect queue length information and other approximations that can simplify the implementation of our policy.

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Abstract-In this paper, we propose and study a general framework that allows the development of distributed mechanisms to achieve full utilization of multi-hop wireless networks. In particular, we develop a generic randomized routing, scheduling and flow control scheme that is applicable to a large class of interference models. We prove that any algorithm which satisfies the conditions of our generic scheme maximizes network throughput and utilization.Then, we focus on a specific interference model, namely the two-hop interference model, and develop distributed algorithms with polynomial communication and computation complexity. This is an important result given that earlier throughput-optimal algorithms developed for such a model relies on the solution to an NP-hard problem. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first polynomial complexity algorithm that guarantees full utilization in multi-hop wireless networks. We further show that our algorithmic approach enables us to efficiently approximate the capacity region of a multi-hop wireless network.

Abstract-This paper analyzes the gains in delay performance resulting from network coding. We consider a model of file transmission to multiple receivers from a single base station. Using this model, we show that gains in delay performance from network coding with or without channel side information can be substantial compared to conventional scheduling methods for downlink transmission.

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