Trade-off analysis of a service-oriented and hierarchical queuing mechanism

This paper sketches a service-oriented and hierarchical queuing mechanism designed to manage radio buffers while delivering web services. The goal is avoid buffer overflow implementing a three-level queuing mechanism. The first level is the message queue which stores messages from user-facing services. At the second level, the messages are fragmented into IP packets which are stored in the packet queue. Finally, the third level is the radio buffer itself. As a result, a multi-homed node has queues for each radio, capturing the likely differences of data rate, buffer size and current usage. A prototype based on web services was tested using real military radios; VHF radios with large coverage (~20 km) but very low data rate (2.4-9.6 kbps). We analyzed the trade-offs within the system configuration, targeting at an optimal and robust radio buffer management.