Individual Packet Deadline Constrained Opportunistic Scheduling for a Multiuser System

In this work an opportunistic scheduling scheme is presented and analyzed for a multiuser system. The objective of the proposed scheme is to minimize the system transmit energy in the presence of a hard deadline delay constraint for the individual packets. In the large system limit, the scheme is modeled and analyzed in the scenario when arriving packets have associated deadlines which vary from packet to packet. We introduce transmission thresholds that depend on channel quality and number of time slots left before a packet reaches its hard deadline. These thresholds are optimized such that they reflect the interaction of deadline delay and channel variation, and result in a minimum system energy. The results demonstrate the saving in energy for a system where the applications have individual packet deadline delay constraints.