Interference-aware routing with bandwidth requirements in mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc networks are expected to deal with diverse multimedia applications demanding heavily QoS requirements. Several QoS routing algorithms have been proposed. However, most of these solutions do not take into account bandwidth demands and the quality of the selected paths in the routing process itself. We present an interference-aware QoS routing which considers the bandwidth demand based on a proposed QoS metric. A cross-layer design allows to perform this metric taking into account updated information of the interference and bandwidth environment. A multipath operation is performed so multiple paths with available bandwidth are formed during the route discovery process. By using the proposed metric it is possible to choose the best QoS route among several paths therefore performing a more appropriate resources allocation - distributed Call Admission Control (CAC) Nowadays, mobile ad hoc networks are expected to deal with diverse multimedia applications demanding QoS. In order to provide quality delivery to these applications, several QoS routing approaches (1) - (4) have been proposed, but it is still a challenging task due to the complexity of the dynamic environment of these networks. In order to facilitate QoS support in ad hoc networks, it is very important to solve the tradeoff between guaranteeing the requirements for the QoS provision with the best efficiency in the use of the networks resources. A cross-layer design tries to combine the functionality of the Routing layer with Medium Access Control (MAC) information and physical layer parameters to provide the routing algorithm with the more accurate information about the current status of the links in order to find the more appropriate path that is able to guarantee the QoS requirements during the whole connection. The proposed QoS routing includes a multipath approach to evaluate the possible available paths for a new connection differentiating them through a QoS metric, considered as a measurement of the bandwidth availability and the interference scenario. The operation of the proposed interference-aware routing algorithm in conjunction with an effective resource allocation in the MAC layer works as a distributed admission control (CAC) so that new QoS demanding applications can be efficiently allocated resources at the expense of the least QoS constrained connections, without disrupting the already QoS active ones. The remaining of the paper is organized as follows. Section II provides an introduction to the proposed QoS routing algorithm. Section III summarizes the effects of considering an interference-aware scenario. Simulation results are evaluated in Section IV and finally, some conclusions are provided in Section V. II. THE QOS ROUTING ALGORITHM