Multi-Path Scheduling Algorithm for Real-Time Video Applications in Next-Generation Wireless Networks

In wireless mobile networks, ensuring quality of service (QoS) for real-time video applications is a challenge due to resource limitations. Nowadays, such a problem can be alleviated by exploiting the features of mobile computers equipped with multiple wireless interfaces, which can be used simultaneously for transmission/reception of data belonging to a single application. This increases the throughput but is tied to the packets reordering issue. This paper proposes a scheme for scheduling packets through different paths and minimizing the reordering delay at the receiver side. The authors consider a QoS negotiation system where active users have a specific amount of bandwidth negotiated with the network by each available interface. To allocate such negotiated bandwidth to users, the network implements a time slot division based strategy.