  Existing models of Multi-Hop Wireless Networks (MHWNs) assume that
interference estimators of link quality such as observed busy time predict the
capacity of the links. We show that these estimators do not capture the
intricate interactions that occur at the scheduling level, which have a large
impact on effective link capacity under contention based MAC protocols. We
observe that scheduling problems arise only among those interfering sources
whose concurrent transmissions cannot be prevented by the MAC protocol's
collision management mechanisms; other interfering sources can arbitrate the
medium and coexist successfully. Based on this observation, we propose a
methodology for rating links and show that it achieves high correlation with
observed behavior in simulation. We then use this rating as part of a
branch-and-bound framework based on a linear programming formulation for
traffic engineering in static MHWNs and show that it achieves considerable
improvement in performance relative to interference based models.
