Delay based routing for real-time traffic in ad hoc networks

In this paper, we propose a routing protocol in an ad hoc network that ensures timely delivery of real-time data packets. This is achieved by carefully accessing the resources available to a route before a session is admitted along that route. Each link in the route is checked for sufficient bandwidth not only for the new session to be admitted but also for the sessions that are already using that link. The new session is admitted only if its admission does not violate the delay bounds of any of the on-going sessions. This method of route selection coupled with per-hop link reservations allows us to provide bounds on the delay performance. Extensive simulation experiments are also conducted that demonstrate the performance of the proposed routing protocol in terms of throughput, session blocking probability, average path length and delay.