Effective capacity-based quality of service measures for wireless networks

An important objective of next-generation wireless networks is to provide quality of service (QoS) guarantees. This requires a simple and efficient wireless channel model that can easily translate into connection-level QoS measures such as data rate, delay, and delay-violation probability. To achieve this, in D. Wu and R. Negi (July 2003), we developed a link-layer channel model termed effective capacity, for the setting of a single hop, constant-bit-rate arrivals, fluid traffic, and wireless channels with negligible propagation delay. In this paper, we apply the effective capacity technique to deriving QoS measures for more general situations, namely: 1) networks with multiple wireless links, 2) variable-bit-rate sources, 3) packetized traffic, and 4) wireless channels with non-negligible propagation delay.