  We study the problem of scheduling packet transmissions with the aim of
minimizing the energy consumption and data transmission delay of users in a
wireless network in which spatial reuse of spectrum is employed. We approach
this problem using the theory of Whittle index for cost minimizing restless
bandits, which has been used to effectively solve problems in a variety of
applications. We design two Whittle index based policies the first by treating
the graph representing the network as a clique and the second based on
interference constraints derived from the original graph. We evaluate the
performance of these two policies via extensive simulations, in terms of
average cost and packets dropped, and show that they outperform the well-known
Slotted ALOHA and maximum weight scheduling algorithms.
