MANET-GNN: Learned Decentralized Optimization of Power Allocation in Multi-Channel MANETs

Abstract

MANETs enable flexible infrastructure-less wireless connectivity in dynamic and resource-constrained environments. As modern MANETs exploit multiple frequency channels and support heterogeneous traffic patterns, decentralized transmit-power allocation becomes increasingly challenging. We develop a unified learned optimization framework for decentralized power allocation in dynamic multi-hop, multi-channel MANETs. We formulate a constrained end-to-end throughput maximization problem covering unicast, multicast, multicommodity, convergecast, and many-to-many communication. Although centralized and non-convex, this problem serves as an unsupervised training objective for MANET-GNN, a message-passing GNN that operates as a distributed learned optimizer. MANET-GNN uses only local, possibly noisy, CSI and a prescribed number of neighbor message exchanges, enabling low-latency decentralized inference while generalizing across topologies and network sizes. Numerical results show that MANET-GNN achieves centralized-competitive performance across communication frameworks, remains robust to channel uncertainty, and scales effectively across MANET configurations.