Distributed MAC Scheduling Mechanism Based on Resource Reservation for IEEE 802.11e-Based Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

Multi-hop wireless communication is playing a key role in today's communication networks. Despite several advancements in communication protocols and technologies, QoS provisioning is still a challenging issue in multi-hop wireless communications. In this paper, we propose a novel scheduling mechanism based on resource reservation for guaranteeing the QoS performance of real-time sessions (RTSNs) in IEEE 802.11e-based multi-hop wireless networks (MHWNs). Since RTSNs are sensitive to end-to-end delay in addition to their throughput requirements, our scheme defines a novel bandwidth reservation mechanism which guarantees resources to high priority services (i.e. RTSNs) for meeting both the delay and the throughput requirements. Moreover, the concurrent transmission (CT) mechanism implemented in the pre-configured contention-free period (CFP) further enhances the bandwidth utilization by means of letting chosen CT partners to transmit data simultaneously without collision. Simulation results show that the proposed scheduling mechanism significantly increases the efficiency of the bandwidth usage and successfully optimizes the QoS performance of RTSNs while providing fairness for other traffic sessions.