QoS routing for distributed MAC-based high rate wireless personal area networks

QoS routing for a TDMA-based HR-WPAN requires bandwidth (time slots) to be reserved on the entire path. Depending on the way of route discovery and bandwidth reservation, QoS routing can be classified into two types: on-demand (reactive) and table-driven (proactive). Simulation results indicate that table-driven QoS routing outperforms on-demand QoS routing when average hop count is large. When average hop count is small, vice versa. Two QoS routing protocols can also be integrated to enhance overall performance. Hybrid QoS routing begins with table-driven QoS routing and, if necessary, switches later on to on-demand QoS routing. By combining proactive and reactive features, hybrid QoS routing maintains network performance satisfactorily regardless of average hop count.