Remote-queueing multiple access (RQMA): providing quality of service for wireless communications

Providing quality of service (QoS) guarantees for wireless communications requires special consideration for the relatively large and time-varying bit error rates of wireless links, due to impairments that are difficult to predict. We describe a new wireless link access scheme called remote-queueing multiple access (RQMA), which allows seamless integration of scheduling disciplines proposed for wired networks that achieve end-to-end QoS guarantees. RQMA supports the flexible and efficient allocation of bandwidth for real-time sessions. Mobile stations send information about their backlogged packets to a base station which executes a scheduling discipline that provides delay bounds. Some minimum portion of the link bandwidth is reserved for the retransmission of packets that are not correctly received but whose deadlines are still not violated. For a fast fading channel with an average error rate of 10^-2, RQMA is capable of delivering real-time traffic with a small average packet loss rate on the order of 10^-5. Similar performance can be achieved for a slow fading channel if the average error rate is no more than 10^-3