A Packet Scheduling Framework for Multipath Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Multipath routing in mobile ad hoc networks distributes traffic on multiple paths between source-destination pair. Both traffic assignment and packet scheduling affect the performance of multipath routing. After the traffic is optimally distributed, a proper packet scheduling can reduce the resequencing delay. In this paper, a packet scheduling framework is proposed to study the effect of scheduling strategy on the resequencing delay. Specifically, each path is modeled as a multiple-node M/M/1 tandem network, and the end-to-end path delay follows the normal distribution. Two scheduling schemes are studied, uniform round scheduling (URS) and non-uniform round scheduling (NURS). Analytical results show that the URS scheme outperforms the NURS one, and by increasing the round length, URS scheme can further reduce the resequencing delay in mobile ad hoc networks