Opportunity-based deficit round robin: a novel packet scheduling strategy for wireless networks

This paper proposes a simple, fair and efficient scheduler for wireless networks called opportunity-based deficit round robin (ODRR). In most schedulers proposed for wireless networks, when a flow encounters errors and uses the allocated resource inefficiently, it is compensated with a larger allocation at a later time to ensure fairness in the number of bytes transmitted successfully. The ODRR scheduler, on the other hand, is based on the premise that fairness should be ensured in the opportunity given to the flows in the use of a resource, and not in the actual benefit received by the flows from the use of a resource. This strategy leads to a significantly more efficient use of the available resources in the system. The ODRR scheduler is versatile enough for use in allocating resources other than bandwidth, and in fact, may also be used in very different contexts such as in an ATM Internet backbone carrying IP packets and in wormhole switches popular in system area networks.