Bandwidth allocation in wireless ad hoc networks: Challenges and prospects

Ensuring each user experiences a satisfactory quality of service is an important challenge for network designers, especially in wireless networks, where resources are relatively scarce and interference is relatively high. Accordingly, there has been recent interest in bandwidth allocation in wireless ad hoc networks, the focus of this article. After highlighting the main challenges, we survey recently proposed solutions, which address the problem at the network or MAC layer, individually or jointly. We also classify these solutions according to some major design criteria, and suggest the directions of future work on bandwidth allocation.