Mission-critical packet transfer with explicit path selection in WMN-based tactical networks

In military communication environments, most mission-critical data should be guaranteed to be delivered to their corresponding targets in time even sacrificing the quality of services (QoSs) for existing non-mission-critical flows. This preemption capability is one of the most required features for the operation of tactical networks. And, it can be achieved by sacrificing QoSs for traditional class-based non mission-critical flows along the path for the delivery of those mission-critical data. Multilevel precedence and preemption (MLPP) has been developed for circuit-switched military networks. Since the paths to deliver data in circuit-switched networks are explicitly established, the implementation of MLPP is very simple,. However, since paths to deliver data are implicit and varying according to the changes of topologies in packet-switched and mobile ad-hoc networks, it is very difficult to implement the precedence capability. In this paper, we propose a preemptive control method to guarantee the delivery of mission-critical data in wireless mesh network (WMN)-based mobile tactical networks. To provide the preemption capability, we also propose a method to establish an explicit path in WMN environment. With the explicitly established path, cross layer-based queue management scheme at each node along the path is also proposed. The performances of the proposed method are evaluated through simulations, and the results show that the proposed method is very suitable to support preemptive mission-critical data delivery.