Online Energy Efficient Packet Scheduling with Delay Constraints in Wireless Networks

We study online energy-efficient packet scheduling in a multi-user AWGN channel. The objective is to minimize the overall energy consumption in both transmission and circuit by adapting packet transmission rates with individual packet delay constraints. The scheduling is online in the sense that the transmission rates are determined without any assumption about future packet arrivals. We consider a transmitter with a general input and the transmitter communicates with multiple receivers with different distances, which means packets may have different power characteristics and delay constraints. We propose to conduct online rate assignment based on backlogged packets and derive the optimal algorithm in transmitting the packets. We compare the proposed scheduler with existing online algorithms via simulation in terms of energy consumption and algorithms efficiency. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the online algorithms in striking a better energy-delay trade-off.