HOL delay based scheduling in wireless networks with flow-level dynamics

How to design a throughput-optimal scheduling algorithm in a heterogeneous wireless network with flow-level dynamics is a challenging problem. In this paper, we investigate the properties of a Head-of-Line (HOL) delay based scheduling algorithm, and prove that it can achieve throughput-optimality with flow-level dynamics. The algorithm is easy to implement because it requires no prior knowledge of the statistics of the arrival traffic and channel state information. Extensive simulations have been conducted to validate the theoretical conclusion and evaluate the performance. It is shown that, at the presence of flow-level dynamics, the HOL delay based scheduling algorithm can outperform the classic queue-length based MaxWeight scheduling, and can achieve a similar performance as other known throughput-optimal scheduling while it is simpler and more practical to implement.