A high performance, frame-based, real-time ATM scheduler is proposed for th
e wireless multimedia environment. We introduce the Delayed Frame Queueing
(DFQ) scheduling protocol which only defines the service priorities, deadli
nes and eligibility times of queued cells. The DFQ protocol does not define
the particular fashion in which a mobile or base station gains access to t
he shared transmission medium; thus, we present DFQ as a generic protocol w
hich can be combined with numerous types of MAC protocols. Key features of
our strategy are its algorithmic and architectural simplicity, its non-ad h
oc scheduling approach, and its unified treatment of all real-time streams
at all service queues within a wireless ATM network. In addition, the delay
and jitter bounds are uncoupled. In this way, end-to-end jitter can be tig
htly controlled even if medium access requires long indeterminate waiting d
urations. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.