An Improved Round Robin Packet Scheduler for Wireless Networks

Scheduling algorithms are important components for providing quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees in wireless networks. The design of such algorithms need to take into account bursty errors and location-dependent channel capacity that are characteristics of wireless networks. In this paper, a new scheduling algorithm for packet cellular networks, wireless deficit round robin (WDRR), is proposed. WDRR is a round robin scheduler that has low implementation complexity and offers a low delay bound, tight fairness index, and good isolation property. In error-prone channels, the algorithm provides short-term fairness among sessions that perceive a clean channel, long-term fairness among all sessions, ability to meet specified throughput objectives for all sessions, and graceful service degradation among sessions that received excess service. Both analysis and simulation are used to verify the WDRR properties.