  This thesis focuses on link scheduling in wireless mesh networks by taking
into account physical layer characteristics. The assumption made throughout is
that a packet is received successfully only if the Signal to Interference and
Noise Ratio (SINR) at the receiver exceeds the communication threshold. The
thesis also discusses the complementary problem of flow control. (1) We
consider various problems on centralized link scheduling in Spatial Time
Division Multiple Access (STDMA) wireless mesh networks. We motivate the use of
spatial reuse as performance metric and provide an explicit characterization of
spatial reuse. We propose link scheduling algorithms based on certain graph
models (communication graph, SINR graph) of the network. Our algorithms achieve
higher spatial reuse than that of existing algorithms, with only a slight
increase in computational complexity. (2) We investigate random access
algorithms in wireless networks. We assume that the receiver is capable of
power-based capture and propose a splitting algorithm that varies transmission
powers of users on the basis of quaternary channel feedback. We model the
algorithm dynamics by a Discrete Time Markov Chain and consequently show that
its maximum stable throughput is 0.5518. Our algorithm achieves higher maximum
stable throughput and significantly lower delay than the First Come First Serve
(FCFS) splitting algorithm with uniform transmission power. (3) We consider the
problem of flow control in packet networks from an information-theoretic
perspective. We derive the maximum entropy of a flow which conforms to traffic
constraints imposed by a generalized token bucket regulator (GTBR), by taking
into account the covert information present in randomness of packet lengths.
