A distributed fluid dynamic motivated quality assurance algorithm for multi-hop wireless transmissions

Abstract

Wireless networks have becomes one of the most important networks in peoples' lives, due to the convenience and the widespread use of wireless devices. One of the main problems of wireless networks is the unstable network performance, which is a critical issue for multimedia traffic. Stable network performance is critical for the achieving of Quality of Service (QoS) assurance on wireless networks. Even though some techniques are proposed to solve this problem, like Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) and Hybrid Coordination Function Channel Access (HCCA), documented in IEEE802.11e, these techniques ignore the multi-hop flow control essential for QoS assurance. The control of the contention window range on the source node is not sufficient to guarantee the throughput, while the traffic flow shares a path with other traffic. The author proposes a fluid dynamic based distributed multi-hop QoS assurance algorithm based on the transmission rate and the contention window range. Based on the analysis, the author designed a distributed system, which only controls a one hop neighbor to handle the QoS requirements. Several simulations were conducted to verify this research, and the simulation results proved that the proposed algorithm is able to provide QoS assurance for multi-hop transmissions.