QoS-based packet scheduling in wireless multimedia networks

Scheduling at packet level is one of the critical technologies in transporting multimedia traffic across wireless networks for providing quality of service (QoS) differentiation and guarantees. Also QoS support in wireless scheduling is dictated by the network architecture and service mode. Moreover, wireless communication poses special problems and difficulties that do not exist in wireline networks. This paper develops a self-organizing, multihop, mobile wireless network, which relies on a token passing access scheme for multimedia support. In the proposed network architecture, mobile nodes are grouped into clusters by QoS specifications and packet characteristics. The clusters are independently controlled, and are dynamically reconfigured as node move. Hence, the network is robust in the face of topological changes caused by node motion, node failure, and node insertion/removal. We model it as a discrete-time system with asymmetric exhaustive service policies by imbedding Markov chain, and apply qualitative and quantitative analysis to validate if the new strategy can provide service at a certain desired performance. Through simulations we show that this architecture provides an efficient, stable infrastructure for the integration of different types of traffic in a dynamic wireless networks. In addition, how the relative variable parameters effect on system characteristics is discussed and compared.