QoS-oriented packet scheduling scheme for opportunistic networks

The unique characteristics of opportunistic networks (ONs), such as intermittent connectivity and limited network resources, makes it difficult to support quality of service (QoS) provisioning, particularly to guarantee delivery ratio and delivery delay. In this paper, we propose a QoS-oriented packet scheduling scheme (QPSS) to make decisions for bundle transmissions to satisfy the needs for the delivery ratio and delivery delay constraints of bundles. Different from prior works, a novel bundle classification method based on the reliability and latency requirements is utilized to decide the traffic class of bundles. A scheduling algorithm of traffic class and bundle redundancy is used to maintain a forwarding and dropping priority queue and allocate network resources in QPSS. Simulation results indicate that our scheme not only achieves a higher overall delivery ratio but also obtains an approximate 14% increase in terms of the amount of eligible bundles.