Mixed scheduling with heterogeneous delay constraints in cyber-physical systems

•To support real-time communication with heterogeneous delay constraints is a challenging issue in CPS.•The paper develops a distributed MAC strategy for the multiple-access scenarios.•The resource allocation problem is modeled as a non-cooperative game.•By game theoretical analysis, the proposed one-shot strategy can achieve the Nash equilibrium.•The game model guarantees real-time performance, and shows scalability under different scenarios.

The physical space and the cyber space are deeply coupled in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The traffic flows are constrained by heterogeneous delay constraints. In order to provide real-time and predictable communication, the paper combines the distributed scheduling algorithm with game theory. A non-cooperative game is proposed to form the scheduling set in the contention-based multiple-access scenario. In the game, each player only has its delay knowledge and makes decision without the information of other competing players. The payoff function is designed to encourage players to give the transmission chance to the player with urgent packets. Simulation results demonstrate that the game-theoretic scheduling approach can improve the real-time performance compared with the existing scheduling algorithms under different scenarios.