Packet scheduling and buffer management are the two important functions adopted in networks design to ensure the Quality of Service (QoS) when different types of packets with different needs of quality share the same network resources. The Packet scheduling policy determines packet service priorities at the output link, it can reduce packet delay and delay jitter for high-priority traffic. The buffer management involves packet dropping and buffer allocation. The overall goal of such schemes proposed in High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is to take advantage of the channel variations between users and preferably schedule transmissions to a user when the channel conditions are advantageous; it does not take in consideration the characteristics of the flows composing the transmitted traffic to the user. This paper compares two queue management mechanisms with thresholds applied for packets transmitted to an end user in HSDPA network. Those mechanisms are used to manage access packets in the queue giving priority to the Real Time (RT) packets and avoiding the Non Real Time (NRT) packets loss. The authors show that the performance parameters of RT packets are similar in the two mechanisms, where as the second mechanism improves the performance parameters of the NRT packets.
A survey of buffer management policies for packet switches