Optimal power scheduling in 802.11n wireless networks for real-time services

The growing popularity of mobile devices in our daily life demands higher throughput of wireless networks. The new communication standard 802.11n has significantly improved throughput because of the use of advanced technologies such as the multiple-input multiple-output communication technique. Because mobile devices are usually battery-operated, power efficiency is critical; on the other hand, delay performance can be improved by transmitting at high power. To address the conflicting requirement of power saving and small delay, power scheduling is needed. In the past, many approaches to power scheduling have been proposed for real-time applications, but few of them have considered complicated modes of channel state information(CSI) in multiple-input multiple-output. In this paper, we study this and classify the CSI into four types, namely, constant, slow fading, fast fading, and unknown. For known CSI, we propose an optimal algorithm for power scheduling. For unknown CSI, we propose an approximate algorithm based on some heuristics. To improve resource utilization, a stochastic delay-bound method is proposed for fast-fading condition. Simulation results demonstrate that the performance achieved by the optimal and heuristic algorithms agrees well with the analysis. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.