Mobile or wireless communications networks are capable of carrying traffic (e.g., voice traffic, data traffic, etc.) between mobile stations and other endpoints, which can be another mobile station or an endpoint connected to a network such as a public-switched telephone network (PSTN) or a packet data network (e.g., local area networks, the Internet, and so forth). Examples of wireless communications networks include those that operate according to the GSM (Global System for Mobile) or UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) standards, as defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Another type of wireless communications network is according to the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 standards, as defined by 3GPP2.
A media gateway is often provided between a radio access network (which is part of the core network of the wireless communications network) and a fixed network such as a PSTN, an Internet Protocol network, or other network. The media gateway performs various signal processing tasks with respect to bearer traffic (e.g., voice traffic) communicated between the radio access network and the fixed network. The signal processing includes encoding and decoding of the bearer traffic, with the encoding and decoding typically performed by a digital signal processor (DSP). The DSP is a shared resource that can be shared by multiple call sessions (or call contexts). Multiple events (e.g., encoding or decoding events) associated with the call contexts are scheduled so that the DSP processes the events one at a time according to the schedule. Conventional scheduling techniques do not allow for efficient handling of dynamically changing numbers of events that are to be processed by the DSP.