  We consider the scheduling of arbitrary wireless links in the physical model
of interference to minimize the time for satisfying all requests. We study here
the combined problem of scheduling and power control, where we seek both an
assignment of power settings and a partition of the links so that each set
satisfies the signal-to-interference-plus-noise (SINR) constraints.
  We give an algorithm that attains an approximation ratio of $O(\log n \cdot
\log\log \Delta)$, where $n$ is the number of links and $\Delta$ is the ratio
between the longest and the shortest link length. Under the natural assumption
that lengths are represented in binary, this gives the first approximation
ratio that is polylogarithmic in the size of the input. The algorithm has the
desirable property of using an oblivious power assignment, where the power
assigned to a sender depends only on the length of the link. We give evidence
that this dependence on $\Delta$ is unavoidable, showing that any
reasonably-behaving oblivious power assignment results in a $\Omega(\log\log
\Delta)$-approximation.
  These results hold also for the (weighted) capacity problem of finding a
maximum (weighted) subset of links that can be scheduled in a single time slot.
In addition, we obtain improved approximation for a bidirectional variant of
the scheduling problem, give partial answers to questions about the utility of
graphs for modeling physical interference, and generalize the setting from the
standard 2-dimensional Euclidean plane to doubling metrics. Finally, we explore
the utility of graph models in capturing wireless interference.
