Minimizing Flow Time in the Wireless Gathering Problem

Vincenzo Bonifaci (1, 2) , Peter Korteweg (3) , Alberto Marchetti-Spaccamela (2) , Leen Stougie (3, 4)

1 Institut für Mathematik [Berlin]
2 Department of Computer and Systems Science [Rome]
3 Department of mathematics and computing science [Eindhoven]
4 CWI - Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica

We address the problem of efficient data gathering in a wireless network through multi-hop communication. We focus on the objective of minimizing the maximum flow time of a data packet. We prove that no polynomial time algorithm for this problem can have approximation ratio less than $\Omega(m^{1/3)$ when $m$ packets have to be transmitted, unless $P = NP$. We then use resource augmentation to assess the performance of a FIFO-like strategy. We prove that this strategy is 5-speed optimal, i.e., its cost remains within the optimal cost if we allow the algorithm to transmit data at a speed 5 times higher than that of the optimal solution we compare to.

Mots clés: wireless networks; data gathering; approximation algorithms; distributed algorithms

Domaines: Algorithme et structure de données [cs.DS]; Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Vincenzo Bonifaci, Peter Korteweg, Alberto Marchetti-Spaccamela, Leen Stougie. Minimizing Flow Time in the Wireless Gathering Problem. STACS 2008, Feb 2008, Bordeaux, France. pp.109-120. ⟨hal-00220388⟩