M-gated Scheduling in Wireless Networks: Performance and Cross-layer Design

E-limited (or K-limited) scheduling is attractive because its performance is close to that of the exhaustive scheduling which is proven to be the optimal polling scheme for symmetric systems (same traffic offered to all queues) by some researches. If the parameter K is chosen properly, E- limited scheduling can avoid the unfairness, which is an inherent problem for the exhaustive service on a short time scale. In this paper, M-gated scheduling which is superior to E- limited is proposed to be used in wireless networks. With the method of the imbedded Markov points and the probability generating function, we develop a model for this novel scheduling algorithm with vacations, where the vacations represent the time periods in which the resource sharing mechanism used is a non-polling mode. The theoretical analyses are consistent with the simulation results. We also use the derived quality of service parameter as the basis for cross- layer design and then analyze its performance.