  This paper presents a heavy traffic analysis of the behavior of multi-class
acyclic queueing networks in which the customers have deadlines. We assume the
queueing system consists of J stations, and there are K different customer
classes. Customers from each class arrive to the network according to
independent renewal processes. The customers from each class are assigned a
random deadline drawn from a deadline distribution associated with that class
and they move from station to station according to a fixed acyclic route.
  The customers at a given node are processed according to the
earliest-deadline-first
  (EDF) queue discipline. At any time, the customers of each type at each node
have a lead time, the time until their deadline lapses. We model these lead
times as a random counting measure on the real line. Under heavy traffic
conditions and suitable scaling, it is proved that the measure-valued lead-time
process converges to a deterministic function of the workload process.
