Real-time communication over unreliable wireless links: a theory and its applications

Wireless networks are increasingly used to serve real-time flows. We provide an overview of an emerging theory on real-time wireless communications and some of its main results. This theory is based on a model that jointly considers the delay bounds and throughput requirements of clients, as well as the unreliable and heterogeneous nature of wireless links. This model can be further extended in several aspects. It provides solutions to three important problems, namely, admission control, packet scheduling, and utility maximization. The theory can also be extended to consider broadcast of real-time flows, and to incorporate network coding.