On fair scheduling for mobile ad hoc networks with channel errors

In this paper, we study fair scheduling in ad hoc networks, accounting for channel errors. Since wireless channels are susceptible to failures, to ensure fairness it may be necessary to compensate those flows with error-prone channels. Existing compensation mechanisms need the support of base stations and only work for one-hop wireless channels. Therefore, they are not suitable for multihop wireless networks. Existing fair scheduling protocols for ad hoc networks can be classified into timestamp-based and credit-based approaches. None of them takes channel errors into account. In this paper, we investigate the compensation issue of fair scheduling and propose a timestamp-based fair scheduling mechanism for multihop mobile ad hoc networks, called timestamp-based compensation protocol (TBCP). We evaluate the performance of the proposed mechanism by simulation and also analyze its long-term throughput. The results show that our analytical result provides accurate approximation for the proposed mechanism.