Optimal Distributed Scheduling of Real-Time Traffic with Hard Deadlines

In this paper, we consider optimal distributed scheduling of real-time traffic with hard deadlines in an ad hoc wireless network. Specifically, we assume the links share a common wireless channel and interference is represented by a conflict graph. Periodic single-hop traffic is considered where packets arrive at the beginning of each frame and need to be delivered by the end of the frame (otherwise, packets will be dropped). Each link is required to guarantee a maximum allowable packet dropping rate. We show that the real-time scheduling problem is combinatorial and tends to be intractable as the network size increases. To solve the real-time scheduling problem, we propose a frame-based carrier-sense multiple access (CSMA) algorithm which is shown to be asymptotically optimal. Moreover, it can be implemented in a distributed manner with low complexity. Simulation results also demonstrate the ability of our algorithm to meet the QoS requirements on deadlines.