Scheduling relay nodes for reliable wireless real-time communications

We consider wireless relay networks for use in industrial applications with strict requirements on both timely and reliable communications. Frequently, more than one suitable relay node is available for retransmitting an erroneous packet. However, if commercially available transceivers are to be used; concurrent transmissions will result in collisions. Further, in a typical industrial network, there may be several data packets that need to travel from source to destination during the same time period. Consequently, relay nodes need to be scheduled to data packets and time instances such that as many packets as possible can be received at their destinations with as high reliability as possible before their respective deadlines. Our goal is thus to increase the data reliability in industrial wireless networks, while respecting real-time deadlines.