Unit-oriented communication in real-time multihop networks

This paper proposes a middleware based solution for supporting unit-oriented communication in real-time networks. A unit is characterized by a set of packets with an associated deadline. The problem is to transfer the unit from a given source to destination before its deadline. The existing scheduling disciplines cannot support unit-oriented communication efficiently because they do not exploit the unique features of the unit. In this paper, we propose three bandwidth allocation approaches (naive model, constant bandwidth model, and decreasing bandwidth model) which exploit the unique features of the unit-oriented communication. Based on these approaches, we also make enhancements to well known scheduling disciplines. Our simulation studies show that the proposed middleware based solution improves the call acceptance rate of the unit-oriented calls significantly. © 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.