QoS support in mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Due to resource constraints and dynamic topology of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), supporting quality of service (QoS) in MANETs is a challenging task. Although lots of research have been done on supporting QoS in the Internet and other networks, they are not suitable for the MANET environment. While traditional protocol layering is an important abstraction to reduce complexity of network design in wired networks, it is not well suited to wireless networks to provide complex functionalities like QoS due to interdependencies of different layers. This paper provides a brief review of the current researches on QoS support in MANETs specially the different existing QoS models and proposes a general framework which is based on a cross layer approach. A thorough investigation of the different techniques at different layers and their adaptation has lead to this simple framework which gives better performance under different traffic loads and mobility scenarios.