Satisfying Arbitrary Delay Requirements in Multihop Networks

The authors consider the problem of scheduling in a multihop packet network so as to satisfy a set of arbitrary end-to-end delay requirements. A number of scheduling protocols are known for which end-to-end delay bounds can be derived. However, it is often the case that these end-to-end delay bounds are large for flows with small rate. This is clearly inappropriate for traffic types such as VoIP for which tight delay bounds are required but session rates are typically small.