  Low latency applications, such as multimedia communications, autonomous
vehicles, and Tactile Internet are the emerging applications for
next-generation wireless networks, such as 5th generation (5G) mobile networks.
Existing physical-layer channel models, however, do not explicitly consider
quality-of-service (QoS) aware related parameters under specific delay
constraints. To investigate the performance of low-latency applications in
future networks, a new mathematical framework is needed. Effective capacity
(EC), which is a link-layer channel model with QoS-awareness, can be used to
investigate the performance of wireless networks under certain statistical
delay constraints. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on existing
works, that use the EC model in various wireless networks. We summarize the
work related to EC for different networks such as cognitive radio networks
(CRNs), cellular networks, relay networks, adhoc networks, and mesh networks.
We explore five case studies encompassing EC operation with different design
and architectural requirements. We survey various delay-sensitive applications
such as voice and video with their EC analysis under certain delay constraints.
We finally present the future research directions with open issues covering EC
maximization.
