## 5 Evaluation  
The evaluation process of the aforementioned scheme consists of four parts. In the first one, the accuracy of the model employed by the TOFRA scheme for capturing the average aggregate flow throughput (AAT) observed in the simulated scenarios is explored. In the second part, the gain in terms of throughput that can be achieved at the network level, by combining TOFRA flow allocation scheme with SIC is explored. In the third part, we compare TOFRA with different flow allocation schemes, both in terms of delay and AAT. Finally, we evaluate the accuracy of the simulated annealing method for identifying the flow rates that achieve the globally maximum average aggregate throughput. For the remainder of this section, the notion of asymmetry for two interfering links will be used to denote the difference between the average received SNR over them. As far as SIC is concerned, it has been shown that performance gain increases with the asymmetry among interfering links [19]. For that reason, three different topologies are explored, based on the one presented in Figure 2. Different topology instances are derived by fixing the distances between pairs of nodes. The corresponding distance values employed are summarized in the table incorporated in the same figure. For all three topologies, two unicast flows are assumed, sourced at nodes, 1 and 2, respectively. Flow \(f_{1}\), is forwarded to \(d\), through path \(1\to R\to d\), while flow \(f_{2}\), through \(2\to d\). Assuming such a traffic scenario, in topology 1 presented in Figure 2, transmissions along link \((1,R)\) experience interference from node 2. If similar SINR threshold (\(\gamma\)) values, for all transmitters, are further assumed, then the received signal on \(R\) from 2, constituting the interference, is received with higher power compared to the signal received from 1. In a similar manner, in topologies 1 and 2, transmissions along link \((2,d)\) experience interference from \(R\). The signal constituting interference from \(R\) is received with higher power at \(d\) than the signal carrying data packets sent from 2. Based on these remarks, for each topology in Figure 2, we consider different interference handling approaches. For topologies 1 and 2, three different approaches for handling interference are explored. In the first one, interference at nodes \(R\), \(d\) is treated as noise. In the second approach, SIC is applied on \(R\), as described in Section 3. In the third one, destination \(d\), first tries to decode the message from \(R\), remove its contribution (interference) to the received signal, and then decode the message from 2. Finally, as far as topology 3, depicted in Figure 2, is concerned, three approaches are also explored. The first two approaches are the same with topologies 1 and 2. In the third one, however, where the destination resides closer to transmitting node 2 instead of \(R\), \(d\) first tries to decode the message received from 2 (interference), remove its contribution to the received signal, and then decode the message from node \(R\). For the rest of the section, we will also use the term successive interference cancelation to describe how interference is handled at destination \(d\). To distinguish among the different approaches discussed above for handling interference, they are labelled after: _IAN_, _SIC(R)_, _SIC(R,d)_, with _SIC(R,d)_ denoting that SIC is applied at both \(R\) and \(d\). As far as allocation of flow (data rates) on different paths is concerned, three different schemes are explored. The first scheme is TOFRA (presented in Section 3). _Full MultiPath (FMP)_ assigns one packet per slot on each path. Finally, the third scheme explored employs only a single path (best path) to forward traffic to the destination.