On scheduling and clustering in hierarchical TH-PPM UWB wireless ad hoc networks

Ultra wideband (UWB) systems are considered as the key wireless infrastructure platforms for efficient short-range communications. In particular, the UWB based mobile computing systems are envisioned to be attractive solutions to various ad hoc networking applications. However, due to UWB's unique physical characteristics, the traditional resource management schemes for ad hoc networks cannot be applied to UWB based systems directly. In this paper, we consider the bandwidth scheduling problem in a UWB based hierarchical wireless ad hoc network, which is typically used in an enterprise-scale mobile computing environment. Based on the mathematical analysis and the computer simulations, it is demonstrated that our proposed scheduling scheme exhibits close-to-optimal performance governed by the proportional fairness (PF) constraint. Moreover, a novel self-organized clustering method is designed to improve the system throughput while meeting the PF constraint. Simulation results suggest that the proposed clustering method is effective under various system configurations.