Delay-Constrained Topology-Transparent Distributed Scheduling for MANETs

Transparent topology is common in many mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) such as vehicle ad hoc networks (VANETs), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ad hoc networks, and wireless sensor networks due to their decentralization and mobility nature. There are many existing works on distributed scheduling scheme design for topology-transparent MANETs. Most of them focus on delay-unconstrained settings. However, with the proliferation of real-time applications over wireless communications, it becomes more and more important to support delay-constrained traffic in MANETs. In such applications, each packet has a given hard deadline: if it is not delivered before its deadline, its validity will expire and it will be removed from the system. This feature is fundamentally different from the traditional delay-unconstrained one. In this article, we for the first time investigate distributed scheduling schemes for a topology-transparent MANET to support delay-constrained traffic. We analyze and compare probabilistic ALOHA scheme and deterministic sequence schemes, including the conventional time division multiple access (TDMA), the Galois field (GF) sequence scheme proposed by Chlamtac and Faragò and the combination sequence scheme that we propose for a special type of sparse network topology. We use both theoretical analysis and empirical simulations to compare all these schemes and summarize the conditions under which different individual schemes perform best.