An Investigation about Real-Time Capacity of a Mobile Wireless Network

Abstract

The deterministic real-time capacity of a network quantifies its ability to deliver messages within their deadlines.Thereby it assumes a static network with a MAC protocol that access the medium in bounded time. However, in a mobilewireless network where a hybrid MAC protocol is adopted, the medium access delay is not upper bounded but can becharacterized by a random variable. This paper introduces a method to determine the real-time capacity of a wirelessnetwork where a hybrid MAC protocol is used. The proposed method is applied to a network composed by mobile nodes, andthe predicted results are compared with results obtained from simulations.