Dynamic support of service differentiation in wireless networks

Wireless networks are becoming progressively the access technology of preference to the global Internet, while fast backbone wired networks (mostly optical IP based) will be transporting large volumes of aggregate traffic. This scenario is one of the main visions set for 4th generation wireless networks. However, in order for this vision to become reality, new features need to be introduced in the wireless networking infrastructure, one of the "key" ones being the ability to provide service differentiation. This is the subject of the present work. It addresses the issues of extending service differentiation to wireless communication systems enabling a network to effectively service delay and throughput sensitive applications. We propose a service differentiation capable network architecture. Our study investigates how different packet scheduling can be accommodated in wireless networks to provide service differentiation for several types of traffic. Our design considers the need for interoperability between wired and wireless world, the spectrum limitations and "error" prone behavior of the wireless channel.