A Framework for Quality of Service with a Multiple Access Strategy

We study a problem of scheduling real-time traffic with hard delay constraints in an unreliable wireless channel. We consider the uplink channel of an infrastructure network with a base station and a fixed number of wireless users. Packets are generated at a constant rate and they need to be delivered to the base station within a fixed number of slots. In a fading wireless channel, we are interested in the fraction of packets that can be successfully delivered within the hard delay bound. Using a notion of rate region, we provide a characterization of the achievable packet delivery rates for the wireless network. We consider a general network model that permits multiple access as a contention mechanism to schedule a user. The multiple access strategy improves the achievable packet delivery rates in comparison with earlier works such as . We discuss rate optimal and utility maximizing strategies for the network using the rate region framework. Using simulations, we evaluate the performance of the multiple access strategy and discuss its advantages.