SUMMARYClassical call admission control schemes focus on QoS enhancements because radio bandwidth will be allocated for mobile communications. Both of radio bandwidth and lifetime duration of mobile node are very important and precious for resources allocation in wireless networks. In this paper, we present a novel admission control for infrastructure‐less clustered wireless networks. The proposed admission control is based on QoS constraints and the lifetime duration of mobile nodes, including speed and power consumption parameters. Some new schemes are introduced, QoS parameters are negotiated during the admission procedure, and a forced handover technique is developed instead of reject flows, using a centralized view of topology. The performance of the proposed scheme was analyzed and evaluated with respect to throughput and call blocking probability, using different classes of traffic. Furthermore, simulation results confirmed the effectiveness of the admission control schemes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.