Strengthening Real Time Communication Support In Wireless Networks

In a distributed real-time wireless communication system the timely delivery of data in the presence of interference and competition for the medium is a key requirement. Typ-ically this is addressed by employing time division multiple access style approaches. The modification of a transmission schedule in such a system- in order to cater for example failed transmissions-requires the consensus of participating hosts. Reaching this consensus may in turn require the exchange of a number of messages, result in high latency for messages of failed transmissions and ultimately mean the missing of real-time deadlines. We propose a framework that reduces the amount of co-ordination among participating hosts and that permits indi-vidual hosts to make autonomous localised decisions about their transmission schedule. This autonomy is achieved through a restructuring of the original TDMA approach and allows hosts to focus on the fulfillment of their indi-vidual deadlines, which in turn should increase the meeting of deadlines in the overall system.