Delay-sensitive application support in 802.11 based multi-hop network

During the recent years, research efforts have been made to study how to deploy the WLAN in a multi-hop manner. One of the many challenges to deploy a multi-hop network is how to provide delay-sensitive application support. Research have been done to study how to use DCF mode in a multi-hop network to provide delay-sensitive application support. However, few research have been made to study how to use PCF mode in a multi-hop network. In this paper, we first propose a CFP leasing scheme based on the PCF mode of 802.11 and a conservative scheduling scheme to enable voice service in a multi-hop network. Then we theoretically and numerically evaluate the performance of proposed scheme. Results show that with the proposed scheme, we can provide real-time application support for a small scale multi-hop network.