Routing and quality of service support for mobile Ad hoc networks

A Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes that can communicate with each other using multi hop wireless links without utilizing any fixed based-station infrastructure and centralized management. The topology of a MANET can be very dynamic due to the mobility of mobile nodes. Because of the dynamic topology and wireless link characteristics, the Quality of Service (QOS) support in mobile Ad hoc networks (MANETs) is a very challenging task. Routing algorithm is a very important mechanism for QOS guaranteeing in networks. In this paper, we present a QOS routing algorithm, called QOS AODV (QAODV), which is an extension to the AODV protocol, we introduce more metrics in addition to the number of hops used by AODV protocol and we give a weight function using several parameters. The QAODV protocol selects optimal routes and also provides Quality of Service and fault tolerance. Results obtained by a simulation show that QAODV allows obtaining some important advantages that makes it increases the throughput and decreases the delay and number of hops and also decreases the route discovery time.