128 Int. J. Sensor Networks, Vol. 2, Nos. 1/2, 2007 Efficient scheduling techniques for high data-rate wireless personal area networks Romano Fantacci and Daniele Tarchi* Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, University of Florence, Firenze, Italy E-mail: romano.fantacci@unifi.it E-mail: tarchi@lart.det.unifi.it *Corresponding author Abstract: Among several wireless network scenarios, the in-home environment is one of the more challenging in recent years. In particular, the Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) seems one of the most interesting application scenario as that networks work in small area for delivering multimedia traffic. The IEEE 802.15.3 is the emerging standard for WPAN. This standard is designed to provide low complexity, low cost and low power-consumption for personal area networks that manage multimedia traffic, video and audio between different devices in a small area environment. The piconet is the basic topology structure of a WPAN and it is defined as group devices where one of them is the PicoNet Coordinator (PNC). A PNC manages the synchronisation and controls the data traffic of the system. This paper proposes some scheduling techniques to be used at the MediumAccess Control (MAC) layer for high data-rate WPANs. The proposed scenario is composed of several nodes generating both data and video traffic respecting the application scenario often foreseen for high-rate WPANs. Two scheduling methods are proposed which, exploiting the traffic growth, can improve the performance of the network in terms of throughput and delay. In particular the performance of an adaptive technique and an optimum technique are compared with the performance of the fixed technique considered in the standard. Keywords: IEEE 802.15.3a; wireless personal area networks; WPANs; scheduling techniques; multimedia traffic management. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Fantacci, R. and Tarchi, D. (2007) ‘Efficient scheduling techniques for high data-rate wireless personal area networks’, Int. J. Sensor Networks, Vol. 2, Nos. 1/2, pp.128–134. Biographical notes: Romano Fantacci graduated in Electronics from the Engineering School of the Università di Firenze, Florence, Italy, in 1982. He received a PhD in Telecommunications in 1987. After joining the Dipartimento di Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni as an Assistant Professor, he was appointed Associate Professor in 1991 and Full Professor in 1999. His current research interests are digital communications, computer communications, queuing theory, satellite communication systems, wireless broadband communication networks, ad hoc and sensor networks. Daniele Tarchi received an MSc in Telecommunications Engineering and PhD in Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Florence, Italy, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. He is now a research fellow at the University of Florence, Italy. His research interests are in resource allocation algorithms in wireless networks, link adaptation and adaptive modulation and coding techniques, MAC protocols in ultra-wide band systems (802.15.3) and ad hoc networks. 1 Introduction In recent years, short range communications have attained a great importance owing to the high degree of miniaturisation in communication devices and achievable data rates. At the beginning there was the Bluetooth (Sairam et al., 2002), which was introduced as a wireless alternative for the wired interconnection of computer devices, such as mouse and keyboard or as a wireless connection between cellular phones and headsets. Since early days, it was clear that the great limitation for the Bluetooth expansion was the data rate: too low for supporting the emerging multimedia applications. A new improvement in the small area network deployment was due to the introduction of the Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) technology (Aiello and Rogerson, 2003; Porcino and Hirt, 2003), which differs from previous communication systems for the use of radio impulses that allow an UWB occupation with low power emissions, leading to high data rate transmissions. Moreover, the UWB devices can be miniaturised very well enabling solutions for interconnection of multimedia devices. and the possibility to carry a great variety of media (e.g. music, video, photo) on the same device has led to the need for interconnecting all the personal devices between them. The piconet concept has been introduced to cover the need of very small area network. A piconet consists of the Copyright © 2007 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.