Maximizing Energy Efficiency in Multiple Access Channels by Exploiting Packet Dropping and Transmitter Buffering

TL;DR

This paper presents a cross-layer scheduling scheme that optimizes energy efficiency in multiuser multi-access systems by leveraging packet buffering and packet dropping, while satisfying QoS constraints such as packet loss.

Contribution

It introduces a novel joint optimization approach that considers physical and higher layers, incorporating transmitter buffering to reduce energy consumption under QoS constraints.

Findings

Buffering significantly reduces energy consumption.

Proposed scheme outperforms traditional MAC layer methods.

Low complexity schemes achieve comparable performance.

Abstract

Quality of service (QoS) for a network is characterized in terms of various parameters specifying packet delay and loss tolerance requirements for the application. The unpredictable nature of the wireless channel demands for application of certain mechanisms to meet the QoS requirements. Traditionally, medium access control (MAC) and network layers perform these tasks. However, these mechanisms do not take (fading) channel conditions into account. In this paper, we investigate the problem using cross layer techniques where information flow and joint optimization of higher and physical layer is permitted. We propose a scheduling scheme to optimize the energy consumption of a multiuser multi-access system such that QoS constraints in terms of packet loss are fulfilled while the system is able to maximize the advantages emerging from multiuser diversity. Specifically, this work focuses on modeling and analyzing the effects of packet buffering capabilities of the transmitter on the system energy for a packet loss tolerant application. We discuss low complexity schemes which show comparable performance to the proposed scheme. The numerical evaluation reveals useful insights about the coupling effects of different QoS parameters on the system energy consumption and validates our analytical results.