CONGESTION CONTROL IN MULTI - HOP WIRELESS NETWORKS by Sumit Rangwala

In this dissertation, we propose that it is necessary to consider wireless neighborhood as a single indivisible entity for congestion control in multi-hop wireless networks. We precisely define this neighborhood for a class of contention-based wireless networks and validate it with three protocols. We design IFRC, an openloop rate-based fully distributed congestion control protocol for multi-hop wireless sensor networks with tree-like traffic pattern. We design WCP, a closed-loop AIMD-based fully distributed end-to-end congestion control protocol for multi-hop wireless networks with arbitrary traffic pattern. In addition, we design WCPCap, an explicit-rate feedback congestion control protocol for multi-hop wireless network. While they differ in their local mechanisms to achieve congestion control all these protocols recognize neighborhood, as per our definition, as a single entity and achieve near optimal performance in both simulations and real deployments.