Fairness as defined in wireline network cannot be achieved in wireless packet networks due to the bursty and location-dependent channel errors of wireless link. Channel-state dependent scheduling and compensation mechanism for errored flows are generally employed to improve the fairness in wireless packet scheduling algorithms. Most of the wireless scheduling algorithms, however, have two common significant problems. One problem is that they operate incorrectly unless all flows have the same packet size. This is due to the incorrect lead-and-lag model and the swapping-based rough compensation mechanism of the algorithms. The other problem is the degradation of error-free flow during compensation. The root of the degradation is that the bandwidth for compensation cannot be reserved since it is very difficult to predict. In this paper, we introduce WGPS (Wireless General Processor Sharing) to define fairness in wireless networks and present PWGPS as a packetized algorithm of WGPS. In our method, lead and lag of all flows are defined in terms of virtual time which is flexible enough to deal with packet size differences. Further, compensation is done by increasing the service share of the errored flow to a predetermined amount Δ. This enables the maximum bandwidth for compensation can be estimated and thus reserved. Our method can be proved to achieve improved fairness as compared with the previous scheduling algorithms.

In this paper, we introduce a concept of minimum bandwidth guaranteed service model for mobile multimedia. In this service model, service is defined in the context of the guaranteed minimum bandwidth and the residual service share. Each flow under this service model is guaranteed with its minimum bandwidth and provided with more in proportion to the residual service share if there is leftover bandwidth. The guaranteed minimum bandwidth assures a flow to keep minimum tolerable quality regardless of the network load, while the leftover bandwidth enhances the quality of service according to the application's adaptivity and the user's interest. We show that the minimum bandwidth guaranteed service model could be implemented by a two-folded wireless packet scheduler consisting of a guaranteed scheduler and a sharing scheduler. Wireless channel condition of each flow is considered in scheduling so that wireless resource can be distributed only to the flows of good channel state, improving total wireless link utilization. We evaluate the service model and the scheduling method by simulation and implementation.