Packet value based scheduling for wireless local area networks

Due to the popularity of realtime and streaming multimedia applications and technical improvements and availability of wireless networks, the demand for accessing realtime applications with strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements over wireless networks has significantly increased in recent years. One important aspect of supporting QoS for such applications is the scheduling of Variable Bit Rate (VBR) flows in a dynamic network. In this paper we propose a method to define a time dependant value of a packet, based on importance of the packet to the stream when it will delivered to the destination. We then propose a scheduling scheme based on the packet value. Using an OPNET based simulation study we then show that the proposed scheduler can decrease the number of packets with excessive delays, while meeting other QoS parameters such as jitter, loss and goodput.