Joint Rate Control and Scheduling for Delay-Sensitive Traffic in Multihop Wireless Networks

The prevalent assumption in the current utility maximisation-based rate control and scheduling solutions for multihop wireless networks has been that bounded packet end-to-end delay can be attained by guaranteeing a pre-specified bandwidth. However, in addition to the inherent complexities in determining the exact bandwidth, this approach requires an admission control strategy. In this paper we present a distributed algorithm that is integrated into the previously proposed rate control and scheduling algorithms and, unlike the previous QoS schemes, regulates packet latency without the need for admission control. The proposed algorithm achieves fairness based on the delay constraints, and enables maximum utilisation of network capacity. We analyse the convergence properties of the proposed algorithm, and demonstrate its performance through numerical examples.