Delay-Guaranteed Path Selection and Scheduling in IAB Networks

Integrated access and backhaul (IAB) is a promising solution to improve coverage at low deployment costs. In IAB networks, due to wireless channel variations, guaranteeing delay for delay-sensitive applications is a major challenge. Given the random traffic arrivals and channel variations, using a central controller for packet-level delay management becomes infeasible due to the added delay from the central controller. In this paper, we propose a distributed cross-layer method to provide delay-guaranteed path selection and scheduling for the IAB network where priority queues and weighted round robin are adopted to deliver differentiated services. Our goal is to determine the optimal path and scheduling decisions to maximize the total utility of the IAB network. We deploy an iterative approach in a distributed manner to solve the maximization problem at each IAB-node. Through simulation, we show that our proposed solution guarantees the delay at the packet-level while achieving considerable gains in terms of delay and packet delivery ratio compared to the state-of-the-art.