A survey on quality-of-service support for mobile ad hoc networks

The general field of mobile ad hoc networking is still in its infancy. Particularly, the challenge of providing Quality-of-Service (QoS) support for ad hoc networks is an open problem and remains relatively uncharted territory. Providing a complete QoS solution for the ad hoc networking environment requires the interaction and cooperation of several components. These components include: (1) a QoS routing protocol, (2) a resource reservation scheme and (3) a QoS capable medium access control (MAC) layer. In this paper, we present a survey of the current research that has addressed each of these components in the context of ad hoc networks. This work is intended to provide a broad and comprehensive view of the various components and protocols required to provide QoS support in computer networks, focusing primarily on ad hoc networks. First, we introduce the unique characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks, which distinguishing this new network architecture from traditional infrastructured wired and wireless networks (i.e. cellular-based networks). We also discuss the impact of these characteristics on QoS provisioning. Next, we describe the first QoS model proposed for mobile ad hoc networks and its relationship to QoS models proposed for the Internet. We then present a review of the proposed algorithms for each QoS component (e.g. QoS routing, resource reservation and the MAC layer). Copyright  2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.