Fair scheduling in mobile ad hoc networks with channel errors

Abstract

We study fair scheduling in ad hoe networks, accounting for channel errors. Since wireless channels are susceptible to failures, to ensure fairness, it may be necessary to compensate those flows on error-prone channels. Existing compensation mechanisms need the support of base stations and only work for one-hop wireless channels. Therefore, they are not suitable for multihop wireless networks. Existing fair scheduling protocols for ad hoc networks can be classified into timestamp-based and credit-based approaches. None of them takes channel errors into account. We investigate the compensation issue of fair scheduling and propose a mechanism called Timestamp-Based Compensation Protocol (TBCP) for mobile ad hoe networks. We evaluate the performance of TBCP by simulation and analyze its long-term throughput. The results show that our analytical result provides accurate performance estimation for TBCP.