A novel scheduler for proportional delay differentiation by considering packet transmission time

The proportional delay differentiation model provides consistent packet delay differentiation between classes of service. The waiting time priority (WTP) scheduler is a priority scheduler in which the priority of a packet increases in proportion to its waiting time, and it is known as the best scheduler to achieve the proportional delay differentiation model. This paper proposes an advanced WTP (AWTP) scheduler, modified from WTP, that takes the packet transmission time into account. Simulation results reveal that when the link utilization is moderate (60%-90%), this scheduler not only obtains more accurate delay proportion than the WTP scheduler, but also reduces the average waiting time.     

Energy optimal scheduler for diversity fading channels with maximum delay constraints

We present a minimal energy packet scheduling and rate control scheme with a strict maximum delay constraint. This problem occures natually in real-time wireless multimedia transmission where a hard delay limit is imposed on each packet. In general, the communication link is assumed to be a diversity channel with multiple parallel sub-channels(e.g. OFDM, or MIMO eigenchannels.) We present both the theoretical optimal solution, which assumes prescient traffic and channel knowlodge, and a causal scheduler where the future is only known statistically. We show that the causal scheduler performs well, to within 3 dB of the prescient optimal in a single channel, and is even better with diversity channels.     

Scheduling with accurate communication delay model and scheduler implementation for multiprocessor system-on-chip

In multiprocessor system-on-chip, tasks and communications should be scheduled carefully since their execution order affects the performance of the entire system. When we implement an MPSoC according to the scheduling result, we may find that the scheduling result is not correct or timing constraints are not met unless it takes into account the delays of MPSoC architecture. The unexpected scheduling results are mainly caused from inaccurate communication delays and or runtime scheduler’s overhead. Due to the big complexity of scheduling problem, most previous work neglects the inter-processor communication, or just assumes a fixed delay proportional to the communication volume, without taking into consideration subtle effects like the communication congestion and synchronization delay, which may change dynamically throughout tasks execution. In this paper, we propose an accurate scheduling model of hardware/software communication architecture to improve timing accuracy by taking into account the effects of dynamic software synchronization and detailed hardware resource constraints such as communication congestion and buffer sharing. We also propose a method for runtime scheduler implementation and consider its performance overhead in scheduling. In particular, we introduce efficient hardware and software scheduler architectures. Furthermore, we address the issue of centralized implementation versus distributed implementation of the schedulers. We investigate the pros and cons of the two different scheduler implementations. Through experiments with significant demonstration examples, we show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Analysis of average burst-assembly delay and applications in proportional service differentiation

In Optical Burst-Switched (OBS) networks, the limitation of optical buffering devices make it impractical to deploy conventional delay-based differentiation algorithms such as Active Queue Management, Weighted Fair Queuing, etc. Furthermore, only the delay that appears due to the burst-assembly process constitutes a variable quantity (all the other sources of delay are mostly fixed), it is then reasonable to make use of the burst-assembly algorithm to provide class-based delay differentiation. The aim of the following study is twofold: first it defines an average assembly delay metric, which represents the assembly delay experienced by a random arrival at the burst assembler of an edge OBS node; and second, this metric is used to define and configure a two-class burst-assembly policy, which gives preference to high-priority traffic over low-priority packet arrivals. The results show that, (1) tuning the parameters of the two-class assembly algorithm, the two classes of traffic exhibit different burst-assembly delay; and, (2) such parameters can be adjusted to provide a given differentiation ratio in the light of the proportional QoS differentiation approach proposed in the literature. A detailed analysis of the two-class assembly algorithm is given, along with an exhaustive set of experiments and numerical examples that validate the equations derived.     

A QoS architecture for quantitative service differentiation

For the past decade, a lot of Internet research has been devoted to providing different levels of service to applications. Initial proposals for service differentiation provided strong service guarantees, with strict per-flow bounds on delays, loss rates, and throughput, but required high overhead in terms of computational complexity and memory, both of which raise scalability concerns. Recently, the interest has shifted to class-based service architectures with low overhead. However, these newer service architectures only provide weak service guarantees, which do not always address the needs of applications. In this article we introduce a service architecture that supports strong per-class service guarantees, can be implemented with low computational complexity, and only requires maintenance of a little state information. A key mechanism of the proposed service architecture is that service rate allocation to classes is adaptive, and combined with buffer management. Furthermore, instead of using admission control or traffic policing, the proposed architecture exploits explicit congestion notification for the purpose of regulating the traffic entering the network.     

AMPCS: Adaptive model predictive control scheduler for guaranteed delay in DiffServ architecture

An increasing number of different applications face the challenge of providing end-to-end quality of service (QoS) support such as bandwidth, delay, jitter, and packet loss. In this paper, we have focused on DiffServ architecture to improve its accuracy. We proposed a new algorithm, called Adaptive Model Predictive Control Scheduler (AMPCS), to schedule differentiated buffers in routers, using Adaptive Model Predictive Control as the controller. AMPCS regulates the service rates of aggregated traffic classes dynamically in a way that some constraints on proportional delay or absolute delay can be guaranteed. Our contribution is to apply a model predictive controller to the scheduling problem to control the QoS parameters accurately. Simulation results show that the AMPCS performs acceptable QoS differentiations at core routers while it maintains end-to-end delay constraints. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A planner and scheduler for semiconductor manufacturing

The Microelectronics Manufacturing Science & Technology ((MMST) project includes two closely related CIM subsystems for planning and scheduling wafer production. The MMST Planner plans all work release into a factory so as to meet stated goals, and predicts work completion dates. The MMST Scheduler operates in real-time to determine the sequence of lot movements and machine loadings that will be performed on the fab floor. Both the Planner and the Scheduler continually maintain plans which are up to date with the factory status by incrementally replanning for unexpected events. The MMST Planner can be used as a decision support tool to rapidly analyze the consequences of various manufacturing decisions. Planning is performed using a modified beam search algorithm, and is based on a time-phased capacity model of the factory. Fuzzy arithmetic is used to model the uncertainty inherent in cycle time data. The MMST Planner is fully distributed, allowing simultaneous users in different parts of the factory. The MMST Scheduler uses a heuristic method called Score Tables to develop schedules of future events. The Scheduler evaluates event prerequisites to determine when to initiate lot transfers and machine loadings, and responds to any failures of execution     

Providing service differentiation for optical-burst-switched networks

This paper proposes a service differentiation scheme called preemptive wavelength reservation protocol (PWRP) to provide proportional quality of service (QoS) for optical-burst-switched (OBS) networks. In the context of service differentiation, traffic is divided into different service classes based on traffic characteristics. A service differentiation scheme then provides different degrees of resource assurance to different classes of traffic in proportion to their service classes. Unlike existing approaches, which may degrade to classless schemes or which may suffer from low wavelength utilization, the mechanism in this paper is robust and efficient and supports an incremental deployment of QoS support. A usage profile for each class is maintained at the router, and a preemptive wavelength reservation mechanism is implemented to ensure QoS. An analytical model is derived and simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance. The results show that the approach described in this paper performs better than existing mechanisms in terms of lower blocking probability and higher resource utilization, making it an excellent QoS mechanism for OBS networks.     

On the analysis of burst-assembly delay in OBS networks and applications in delay-based service differentiation

In Optical Burst Switching (OBS), packets travel through the network core as part of longer-size optical bursts, which do not suffer electronic conversion until they reach an eggress point. Typically, such optical bursts comprise tens or hundreds of packets, which are assembled/deassembled at border nodes. During the burst-formation process, each arriving packet must wait until the final burst is complete, which clearly adds an extra delay on each packet in the burst, especially on those arriving earlier. However, such burst-assembly delay may be excessive for the appropriate performance of certain applications, mainly real-time interactive ones. This work’s findings are twofold: first, it characterises the burst-assembly delay distribution of each packet in a burst arisen by the main assembly algorithms found in the literature; and, second, it introduces a new burst-assembly strategy that takes into account the particular delay constrains of packets in the formation of optical bursts, along with a detailed study of its properties. This work has been funded by the “Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia” of Spain under grant TEC2006-03246.     

An upper bound delay for the virtual-clock service discipline

Proves that a connection composed of virtual-clock servers provides an upper bound on delay for leaky bucket constrained sessions, i.e., sessions conforming to a token bucket filter. This upper bound on delay is calculated, and it is the same upper bound on delay given by PGPS. The authors also prove that leaky bucket constrained sessions are the only type of sessions for which an upper bound on delay can be provided by servers with an upper bound on link capacity     

基于位置的无线传感器网络可靠性区分服务机制

如何根据不同任务的不同可靠性需求来提供相应的服务是无线传感器网络所面临的最重要问题之一.结合基于位置的路由机制,给出衡量可靠性的量化度量模型,该模型无需全局网络拓扑信息.通过引入虚拟参考点,将数据的转发限制在特定区域从而减少无关传感器节点的能耗.分析了该区域与可靠性的函数关系,得到了可靠性随着参考点与源节点距离的增长而平方级增长的结论.在此基础上给出区分可靠性的服务机制.实验结果表明所提机制有效.     

A discrete time-limited vacation model for the fair share scheduler

We present a vacation model which can be used as a component of the type of polling system encountered in a fair share scheduler. Consider two queues in tandem attended by one server. The primary queue Q _p, which has an infinite buffer, has a preemptive priority over the secondary queue Q _s which has a finite buffer. Jobs which complete service at the primary queue will go into the secondary queue for another service with a probability p. The server visits Q _s for a maximum of T units of time. After visiting for T units of time or after Q _s becomes empty, whichever occurs first, the server goes on a vacation. The duration of this vacation has a phase type distribution. The vacation can also be interrupted in order to attend to the jobs in Q _p. The resulting Markov chain describing this system is of the QBD type. We show that the resulting R matrix associated with this Markov chain has a very special structure which reduces to the solution of a smaller dimension matrix. We then show how to obtain the key performance measures for this system. Of interest is the approach used for obtaining the waiting time distribution. Some numerical examples are also presented. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A novel change-detection scheduler for a network of depth sensors

In many monitoring applications such as smart home and surveillance, deployment of multiple depth sensors increases monitoring area and offers better occlusion handling which is not sensitive to illumination condition in comparison with RGB sensors. However, multiple sensors also increase the volume of data associated with signal processing alongside the associated computational complexity and power consumption. In order to address these drawbacks, this paper proposes a novel change detection algorithm that can be used as a part of a sensor scheduler in a centralized (e.g. star) network configuration. Initially, each sensor in the network performs a unique single scan of the common environment in order to detect any incremental changes in the sensed depth signal. This initial change detection is then used as a basis for several follow-up tasks such as foreground segmentation, background detection, target detection, and tracking for monitoring tasks. Here, instead of processing a complete depth frame, we proposed to utilize a collection of 1D scans of the depth frames. A confidence function is defined that can be used to estimate the reliability of the detected changes in each sensor and to reduce any false positive events which can be triggered by the noise and outliers. Analysis of the proposed confidence function is carried out through performance analysis in the presence of sensor noise and other parameters which can affect the reliability of the sensed data of each sensor. Finally, a score function is defined based on the confidence of the detected parameters and sensor resolution in order to rank and match sensors with the associated objects to be tracked. It results in tracking target(s) by a sensor (or sensors) that offer a high tracking score. This approach offers many advantages such as decreasing the overall system power consumption by placing the sensors with a low confidence value on standby mode and reducing the overall computational overheads.     

Neural scheduler for real-time packet switching

To resolve transmission conflict in space-division packet switches, it is necessary to find a conflict-free switching schedule with a fixed and short duration. A neural scheduler is proposed for real-time conflict resolution in space-division packet switches. This neural scheduler has smaller mean and variance of the number of iterations compared to existing ones, and can guarantee that P [required number of iterations ⩽n] ⩾P* where n and P* are the requirements specified by the user     

Fair queueing with service envelopes (FQSE): a cousin-fair hierarchical scheduler for subscriber access networks

In this paper, we propose and investigate the characteristics of a fair queueing with service envelopes (FQSE) algorithm-a hierarchical fair-share scheduling algorithm for access networks based on a remote scheduling system such as Ethernet passive optical networks (EPON) or cable TV network. FQSE is designed to overcome the limiting factors of a typical remote scheduling system such as large control-plane delay, limited control-plane bandwidth, and significant queue switch-over overhead. The algorithm is based on a concept of service envelope-a function representing the fair allocation of resources based on a global network condition called satisfiability parameter (SP). We define properties of cousin-fairness and sibling-fairness and show the FQSE to be cousin-fair. FQSE is unique in that it is the only hierarchical algorithm that is simultaneously cousin-fair. Furthermore, we show the necessary techniques to adapt FQSE to variable-sized packet-based networks. We analyze FQSE performance in EPON serving 1024 independent queues and demonstrate FQSE's ability to provide guaranteed bandwidth to each queue and to share the excess bandwidth fairly.     

Use of a fuzzy logic scheduler to improve quality of service on cellular networks

Telecommunication Systems - An efficient and fair packet scheduler is very important to guaranty the cellular network quality of service (QoS). In general, classic packet schedulers follow static...     

Exact admission control for networks with a bounded delay service

To support the requirements for the transmission of continuous media, such as audio and video, multiservice packet-switching networks must provide service guarantees to connections, including guarantees on throughput, network delays, and network delay variations. For the most demanding applications, the network must offer a service which provides deterministically bounded delay guarantees, referred to as “bounded delay service.” The admission control functions in a network with a bounded delay service require `schedulability conditions' that detect violations of delay guarantees in a network switch. Exact schedulability conditions are presented for three packet scheduling methods: earliest-deadline-first (EDF), static-priority (SP), and a novel scheduling method, referred to as rotating-priority-queues (RPQ). By characterizing the worst-case traffic with general subadditive functions, the presented schedulability conditions can be applied to a large class of traffic models. Examples, which include actual MPEG video traces, are presented to demonstrate the trade-offs involved in selecting a packet scheduling method for a bounded delay service     

Neural parallel-hierarchical-matching scheduler for input-bufferedpacket switches

Input-buffered packet switches boosted with high-performance schedulers achieve near-100% throughput. Several authors have proposed the use of neural schedulers. These schedulers have a fast theoretical convergence, but the standard deviation of the number of iterations required can be arbitrarily large. In a previous paper, the authors proposed a hybrid digital-neural scheduler, HBRTNS, with bounded response time: O(N) clock steps. As an evolution of that concept, the authors present a two-stage neural Parallel-Hierarchical-Matching scheduler (nPHM), which generates high quality solutions in few clock steps. We present numerical comparisons with diverse state-of-the-art algorithms and the ideal output-buffered case     

A fuzzy logic based buffer management scheme with traffic differentiation support for delay tolerant networks

Delay tolerant networks (DTNs) are an emerging class of wireless networks which enable data delivery even in the absence of end-to-end connectivity. Under these circumstances, message replication may be applied to increase the delivery ratio. The requirement of long term storage and message replication puts a burden on network resources such as buffer and bandwidth. Buffer management is an important issue which greatly affects the performance of routing protocols in DTNs. Two main issues in buffer management are drop decision when buffer overflow occurs and scheduling decision when a transmission opportunity arises. The objective of this paper is to propose an enhancement to the Custom Service Time Scheduling traffic differentiation scheme by integrating it with a fuzzy based buffer ranking mechanism based on three message properties, namely, number of replicas, message size and remaining time-to-live. It uses fuzzy logic to determine outgoing message order and to decide which messages should be discarded within each traffic class queue. Results of simulation study show that the proposed fuzzy logic-based traffic differentiation scheme achieves improved delivery performance over existing traffic differentiation scheme for DTNs.     

Improved MLWDF scheduler for LTE downlink transmission

In long-term evolution (LTE) downlink transmission, modified least weighted delay first (MLWDF) scheduler is a quality of service (QoS) aware scheduling scheme for real-time (RT) services. Nevertheless, MLWDF performs below optimal among the trade-off between strict delay and loss restraints of RT and non-RT traffic flows, respectively. This is further worsened with the implementation of hybrid automatic retransmission request (HARQ). As these restraints grow unabated with increasing number of user demands, the performance of MLWDF further reduces. In order to ameliorate this situation, there is a need to directly incorporate the variations in user demands and HARQ implementation as parameters to the MLWDF scheduler. In this work, an improvement to the MLWDF scheduler is proposed. The improvement entails adding two novel parameters that characterise user demand and HARQ implementation. The scheduler was tested using varying three classes of service in QoS class identifiers (QCIs) table standardised by Third Generation Partnership Project for LTE network to characterise different services. It was also tested on the basis of packet prioritisation. The proposed scheduler was simulated with LTE-SIM simulator and compared with the MLWDF and proportional fairness schedulers. In terms of delay, throughput and packet loss ratio; the proposed scheduler increased overall system performance.