Scheduling for heterogeneous traffic in next generation wireless networks

Future generation wireless packet networks will support multimedia applications with diverse quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. There is a need to develop a packet scheduling scheme for wireless channels that provides QoS guarantees for heterogeneous traffic and is also simple to implement and manage. This paper focuses on packet scheduling on a reservation-based on-demand TDMA/TDD wireless uplink channel to service integrated real-time traffic. The proposed token bank fair queuing (TBFQ) scheduling mechanism integrates the policing and servicing functions and keeps track of the usage of each connection. This scheme results in lower packet delay, jitters and violation probability. The performance is evaluated using computer simulations. The tradeoffs between the parameters are examined. It is also demonstrated that TBFQ performs rather well even when traffic conditions deviate from the established contracts.