Optimal Gathering Protocols on Paths under Interference Constraints

Description

We study the problem of gathering information from the nodes of a multi-hop radio network into a predefined destination node under reachability and interference constraints. In such a network, a node is able to send messages to other nodes within reception distance, but doing so it might create interference with other communications. Thus, a message can only be properly received if the receiver is reachable from the sender and there is no interference from another message being simultaneously transmitted. The network is modeled as a graph, where the vertices represent the nodes of the network and the edges, the possible communications. The interference constraint is modeled by a fixed integer $\di \geq 1$, which implies that nodes within distance $ \di$ in the graph from one sender cannot receive messages from another node. In this paper, we suppose that each node has one unit-length message to transmit and, furthermore, we suppose that it takes one unit of time (slot) to transmit a unit-length message and during such a slot we can have only calls which do not interfere (called compatible calls). A set of compatible calls is referred to as a round. We give protocols and lower bounds on the minimum number of rounds for the gathering problem when the network is a path and the destination node is either at one end or at the center of the path. The protocols are shown to be optimal for any $d$ in the first case, and for $1 \leq \di \leq 4$, in the second case.

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