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The quality of service of many modern communication systems depends on the delay performance of the underlying network. In digital subscriber line (DSL) networks, for example, crosstalk introduces competition for data rate among users, which influences the delay distribution. In such a competitive environment, delay performance is largely determined by the manner in which resources are dynamically allocated to the different users. A common approach to this allocation problem is through a cross-layer scheduler. Such a scheduler violates the OSI model by allowing communication between different layers, in order to steer the physical layer towards operating points that maximize some upper layer performance metric. In this paper, we present a new cross-layer scheduler and resource allocation algorithm in the context of DSL networks, referred to as the minimal delay violation (MDV) scheduler, which aims to minimize the number of delay violations and achieve a high throughput. Rather than solving a linear network utility maximization problem, as most other schedulers from literature, we consider a problem that is reciprocal with the service rate, allowing the scheduler to allocate the data rates at a finer level, while still maintaining good performance. Through simulations, we show that the MDV scheduler performs better than cross-layer scheduling algorithms from literature with respect to packet loss ratio, delay and throughput performance for various scenarios, and often operates closely to an ideal scheduler.

In this paper, we study a finite capacity queue where the arrival process is a special case of the discrete time Markov modulated Poisson process, the service times are generally distributed, and the server takes repeated vacations when the system is empty. The buffer acceptance strategy is based on a generalized push-out scheme: when the buffer is full, an arriving customer pushes out the Nth customer in the queue, where N takes values between 2 and the capacity of the system, and the arriving customer joins the end of the queue. Such a strategy is important when, as well as short waiting times for served customers, the time a pushed-out customer occupies a buffer space is also an important performance measure. The Laplace transform of the waiting time of a served customer is determined. Numerical examples show the influence of the bustiness of the input process and also the trade-off between the average waiting time of served customers and the occupancy of the buffer space of pushed-out customers.

Deploying low maintenance and long-life systems is an important requirement of emerging commercial Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. Such systems can be envisioned in which the connected devices are powered by energy harvested from ambient sources and stored in long-lifetime capacitors rather than short-lived and polluting batteries. However, due to the unpredictable nature of ambient energy harvesting, such batteryless IoT devices might not always have enough energy to initiate communication. The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) specification defines support for Low Power Nodes (LPNs) using the friendship feature, where the LPN is associated with a neighbouring friend node (FN). The LPN can receive downlink (DL) data and remain connected to the network via the FN that buffers the LPN’s incoming packets while allowing the LPN to save energy by sleeping or turning itself off. This novel BLE feature makes the LPN highly suitable to support the connection of batteryless ambiently-powered IoT devices. While the LPN can decide when to transmit uplink (UL) packets and does not depend on the FN to receive downlink (DL) data, the LPN needs to poll its FN to receive the buffered packets. However, the DL packet latency increases with this process due to the buffering time at the FN. Therefore, in this work, we present an analytical model to characterize the performance as a function of DL data latency and packet delivery ratio (PDR) of a batteryless LPN powered by different harvesting powers and capacitor sizes. This would help to optimally choose the correct configuration of the batteryless LPN for its network deployment. We also compare the analytical model and simulation results, showing consistency with an average error of 2.23% for DL data latency and 0.09% for the PDR.

Multihop mobile wireless networks have drawn a lot of attention in recent years thanks to their wide applicability in civil and military environments. Since the existing IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) standard does not provide satisfactory access to the wireless medium in multihop mobile networks, we have designed a cross-layer protocol, (CroSs-layer noise aware power driven MAC (SNAPdMac)), which consists of two parts. The protocol first concentrates on the flexible adjustment of the upper and lower bounds of the contention window (CW) to lower the number of collisions. In addition, it uses a power control scheme, triggered by the medium access control (MAC) layer, to limit the waste of energy and also to decrease the number of collisions. Thanks to a noticeable energy conservation and decrease of the number of collisions, it prolongs significantly the lifetime of the network and delays the death of the first node while increasing both the throughput performance and the sending bit rate/throughput fairness among contending flows.