Flexible scheduling for wireless IP networks with heterogeneous traffic

Integration of wireless networks and the Internet is an ongoing process. Quality of service (QoS) provisioning is essential for wireless IP networks, due to unpredictable errors in the wireless link and coexistence of multiple traffic classes. We propose a scheduling algorithm, a wireless class-based flexible-fair queuing (WCFQ), intended to support QoS demands of different traffic classes and at time varying error rates. It uses priorities to distinguish between best-effort class and class with guaranteed bandwidth, which is further divided into CBR, VBR and guaranteed best-effort subclasses. WFQ is applied within each class/subclass in an error-free state. During error-state, CBR flows receive their guaranteed service rate until a predefined limit is reached by weight adjustment. The algorithm swaps a portion of bandwidth shares between erroneous and error-free best-effort flows what leads to their maximized throughput over long time scales.