Policies for periodic packet routing

Abstract

In the periodic packet routing problem each of a set of tasks repeatedly emits packets over an infinite time horizon. These have to be routed along their fixed path through a common network. A schedule must resolve the resource conflicts on the arcs, such that the maximal delay any packet experiences can be bounded. The scheduling policies themselves must be simple enough to be executed in real-time, i.e., with low computational overhead. We compare the potential of two natural classes of policies, namely, template schedules and priority schedules by giving algorithms and lower bounds. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.