An Integrated Scheme for Establishing Dependable Real-time Channels in Multihop Networks

The issue of providing fault-tolerance in real-time com- munication has been a problem of growing importance. There are two basic approaches for satisfying fault-tolerant requirements in real-time communication: (i) forward error recovery approach and (ii) detect and recovery approach. The first approach is well-suited for hard real-time commu- nication, whereas the second approach is well-suited for soft real-time communication. Neither of these basic approaches is well-suited for applications which involve both hard and soft real-time communication. In this paper, we propose an integrated scheme that combines the benefits of both the ba- sic approaches. The proposed scheme not only caters to such mixed communication requirements, but also improves the call acceptance rate significantly due to its efficient resource allocation mechanisms such as traffic dispersion and backup multiplexing. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme has been evaluated through extensive simulation studies.