Wireless Packet Scheduling With Soft Deadlines

— We address the problem of scheduling multiple traffic streams associated with target profiles on a shared wireless link, arising in real-time applications with soft/flexible deadline constraints (e.g. multimedia streaming). A target profile specifies the inter-packet deadline constraints for a user’s traffic stream, or equivalently, the time instants at which the user should ideally receive packets to ensure uninterrupted multimedia playout. Contention for the shared link and fluctuations in wireless channel quality prevent users from being served in accordance with their desired target profiles. The goal of the scheduler is to dynamically schedule users to ensure that their target profiles are adhered to as closely as possible. We formulate the scheduling problem in a dynamic programming (DP) framework. Leveraging key structural properties of the optimal control to the DP, we propose our heuristic MinProj scheduling policy. We experimentally demonstrate the efficacy of...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ICC
• Authors: Aditya Dua, Nicholas Bambos
• Keywords: Communications, Deadline Constraints, ICC 2007, Target Profiles, Traffic Stream