An improved security-aware packet scheduling algorithm in real-time wireless networks

Developing security-aware packet scheduling algorithms can efficiently enhance the security while delivering packets through wireless links. Existing scheduling algorithms developed for real-time wireless networks provide security at the cost of other important performance, e.g., schedulability. The performance problem becomes especially apparent when wireless networks are heavily loaded. To address this issue, we propose in this paper an improved security-aware packet scheduling algorithm (or ISAPS in short) in wireless networks. ISAPS first gives high priority to deal with schedulability when the real-time system is heavily loaded. When the system is under light workload, ISAPS strives to improve the security levels while achieving high schedulability for real-time packets. Compared with the existing packet scheduling algorithm SPSS, ISAPS shows excellent scheduling quality under a wide range of workload characteristics.

► An improved security-aware packet scheduling algorithm ISAPS was proposed. ► ISAPS makes best tradeoffs between schedulability and security according to the system workload. ► Simulations results exhibited ISAPSʼs superiority to an existing packet scheduling algorithm SPSS. ► ISAPS improves the adaptivity of real-time wireless networks.