Distributed channel probing for efficient transmission scheduling in wireless networks

It is energy-consuming and operationally cumbersome for all users to continuously estimate the channel quality before each transmission decision in opportunistic scheduling over wireless fading channels. This observation motivates us to understand whether and how opportunistic gains can still be achieved with significant reductions in channel probing requirements and without centralized coordination amongst the competing users. To that end, we first study a simple scenario that motivates us to consider the general setup and develop probing and transmission schemes that are amenable to distributed implementation. After characterizing the maximum achievable throughput region under the probing constraints, we provide an optimal probing algorithm. Noting the difficulties in the implementation of the centralized solution, we develop a novel Sequential Greedy Probing (SGP) algorithm, which is naturally well-suited for physical implementation and distributed operation. We show that the SGP algorithm is optimal in the important scenario of symmetric and independent ON-OFF fading channels. Then, we study a variant of the SGP algorithm in general fading channels to obtain its efficiency ratio as an explicit function of the channel statistics and rates, and note its tightness in the symmetric and independent ON-OFF fading scenario. We further discuss the distributed implementation of these greedy solutions by using the Fast-CSMA technique.