Real-time guarantee of aperiodic packets in single-hop ad-hoc wireless networks

Building real-time applications on 802.11 wireless networks is challenging because the medium access protocol is distributed and nodes contend for the channel nondeterministically. So far all attempts at providing real-time services in 802.11 require restrictive traffic assumptions such as periodicity. In this paper we describe distributed admission control, a modification to 802.11 that, when used with distributed prioritization, provides real-time guarantees for aperiodic packets. We show that barring external errors such as interference on the channel or incorrect priority scheduling this protocol guarantees deadlines will be met.