Patent ID: 8467338

Claim:
A method of scheduling wireless communication for one or more data flows, wherein, for each data flow, there is a corresponding queue to store data of that data flow, one or more quality-of-service parameters associated with that data flow, and a flow type associated with that data flow, there being a plurality of possible flow types, the method comprises: maintaining a record of the amount of bandwidth available for the wireless communication during the current time frame; maintaining, for each of the plurality of possible flow types, a queue list that identifies the queues corresponding to data flows of that flow type; and processing the queue lists in a predetermined order based on the quality of service parameters associated with the corresponding data flow, in which processing a queue list comprises, for each queue identified in that queue list: in response to determining the flow type associated with the queue is of a first type, attempting to schedule the communication of data stored at the queue for a current time frame based on one or more quality of service parameters and based on an amount of bandwidth available for wireless communication during the current time frame; and in response to determining the flow type associated with the queue is of a second type, attempting to schedule the communication of data stored at the queue for the current time frame based on whether a deadline to communicate the data has been missed and based on an amount of credits assigned to the data flow, the credits comprising a first credit based upon a minimum amount of data for the data flow and a second credit based upon a maximum amount of data for the data flow.