A delay-based cross-layer scheduler for adaptive DSL

The quality of experience of many modern network services depends on the delay performance of the underlying communications network. In DSL networks, crosstalk introduces competition for bandwidth among users. In such a competitive environment, delay performance is largely determined by the manner in which the cross-layer scheduler assigns bandwidth to the different users. Existing cross-layer schedulers optimize a simple metric, and do not consider important information that is contained within a queue's packets. In this paper, we present a new cross-layer scheduler, referred to as the minimal delay violation (MDV) scheduler, which optimizes a more elaborate metric that closely resembles the quality of experience of the users. Through simulations, it is shown that the new scheduler outperforms the state of the art in cross-layer scheduling algorithms.