Energy-Efficient Network Routing with Discrete Cost Functions

Abstract

Energy consumption is an important issue in the design and use of networks. In this paper, we explore energy savings in networks via a rate adaptation model. This model can be represented by a cost-minimization network routing problem with discrete cost functions. We formulate this problem as an integer program, which is proved to be NP-hard. Then a constant approximation algorithm is developed. In our proposed method, we first transform the program into a continuous-cost network routing problem, and then we approximate the optimal solution by a two-step rounding process. We show by analysis that, for uniform demands, our method provides a constant approximation for the uniform network routing problem with discrete costs. A bicriteria network routing problem is also developed so that a trade-off can be made between energy consumption and network delay. Analytical results for this latter model are also presented.