Chromatic scheduling polytopes coming from the bandwidth allocation problem in point-to-multipoint radio access systems

Abstract

Point-to-Multipoint systems are a kind of radio systems supplying wireless access to voice/data communication networks. Such systems have to be run using a certain frequency spectrum, which typically causes capacity problems. Hence it is, on the one hand, necessary to reuse frequencies but, on the other hand, no interference must be caused thereby. This leads to a combinatorial optimization problem, the bandwidth allocation problem, a special case of so-called chromatic scheduling problems. Both problems are NP-hard and it is known that, for these problems, there exist no polynomial time algorithms with a fixed approximation ratio. Algorithms based on cutting planes have shown to be successful for many other combinatorial optimization problems. In order to apply such methods, knowledge on the associated polytopes is required. The present paper contributes to this issue, exploring basic properties of chromatic scheduling polytopes and several classes of facet-defining inequalities.