Communication over fading channels with delay constraints

We consider a user communicating over a fading channel with perfect channel state information. Data is assumed to arrive from some higher layer application and is stored in a buffer until it is transmitted. We study adapting the user’s transmission rate and power based on the channel state information as well as the buffer occupancy; the objectives are to regulate both the long-term average transmission power and the average buffer delay incurred by the traffic. Two models for this situation are discussed; one corresponding to fixed-length/variable-rate codewords and one corresponding to variable-length codewords. The trade-off between the average delay and the average transmission power required for reliable communication is analyzed. A dynamic programming formulation is given to find all Pareto optimal power/delay operating points. We then quantify the behavior of this tradeoff in the regime of asymptotically large delay. In this regime we characterize simple buffer control policies which exhibit optimal characteristics. Connections to the delay-limited capacity and the expected capacity of fading channels are also discussed.