Redefinition of Max-Min Fairness in Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

In this paper, it is shown that it is challenging to evaluate service fairness in multi-hop wireless networks due to intra-flow contention and unequal channel capacity. The conventional fairness criterion in wireline networks in terms of flow rate is not appropriate in the wireless environment. Thus, the channel time in the maximal clique is proposed here as an alternative criterion. Based on this criterion, a new definition of max-min fairness for wireless networks is given. This definition is shown to be general for both wireless and wireline networks. Under certain conditions, it is seen to be equivalent to the proportional fairness definition.