Analysis of the Tradeoff between Delay and Source Rate in Multiuser Wireless Systems

This work addresses the limits on the information that can be transmitted over the wireless channel under the conditions stated by the MAC layer: a selected scheduling discipline and an ensured level of QoS. Based on the effective bandwidth theory, the joint influence of the channel fading, the data outsourcing process, and the scheduling discipline in the QoS metrics are studied. We obtain a closed-form expression of the vector of attainable users’ rates RDt ,ε for several scheduling algorithms, representing the maximum constant rate that the uth user can transmit under the selected discipline and fulfilling a target Bit Error Rate (BER) and the delay constraint given by the pair (Dt , ε), where Dt is the target delay and ε is the probability of exceeding Dt .