We study a problem of scheduling real-time traffic with hard delay constraints in an unreliable wireless channel. We consider the uplink channel of an infrastructure network with a base station and a fixed number of wireless users. Packets are generated at a constant rate and they need to be delivered to the base station within a fixed number of slots. In a fading wireless channel, we are interested in the fraction of packets that can be successfully delivered within the hard delay bound. Using a notion of rate region, we provide a characterization of the achievable packet delivery rates for the wireless network. We consider a general network model that permits multiple access as a contention mechanism to schedule a user. The multiple access strategy improves the achievable packet delivery rates in comparison with earlier works such as. We discuss rate optimal and utility maximizing strategies for the network using the rate region framework. Using simulations, we evaluate the performance of the multiple access strategy and discuss its advantages. © 2012 IEEE.