Online Packet Scheduling under Adversarial Jamming

Abstract: We consider the problem of scheduling packets of different lengths via a directed communication link prone to jamming errors. Dynamic packet arrivals and errors are modelled by an adversary. We focus on estimating relative throughput of online scheduling algorithms, that is, the ratio between the throughputs achieved by the algorithm and the best scheduling for the same arrival and error patterns. This framework allows more accurate analysis of performance of online scheduling algorithms, even in worst-case arrival and error scenarios. We design an online algorithm for scheduling packets of arbitrary lengths, achieving optimal relative throughput in the range (1/3,1/2] (the exact value depends on packet lengths). In other words, for any arrival and jamming patterns, our solution gives throughput which is no more than c times worse than the best possible scheduling for these patters, where c in [2; 3) is the inverse of relative throughput. Another algorithm we design makes use of additional resources in order to achieve relative throughput 1, that is, it achieves at least as high throughput as the best schedule without such resources, for any arrival and jamming patterns. More precisely, we show that if the algorithm can run with double speed, i.e., with twice higher frequency, then its relative throughput is 1. This demonstrates that throughput of the best online scheduling algorithms scales well with resource augmentation. Keywords: Packet scheduling, Dynamic packet arrivals, Adversarial jamming, Online algorithms, Relative throughput, Resource augmentation.