Using P2P overlays to provide QoS in service-oriented wireless networks

An increasing number of applications require some form of guarantees from the network, in terms of bandwidth or access and transfer delay. This demand for quality of service can be met by means of different mechanisms, depending on the networks being traversed, as well as the degree of integration of the services with the communication infrastructure. Whereas end-to-end QoS provision is still an open problem, several possibilities now exist in local environments. The article investigates the capabilities offered by a P2P overlay for distributed bandwidth management in a controlled ad hoc deployment, to support specific requirements in service-oriented wireless networks. The mechanism proposed allows complementing the core functionalities of the IEEE 802.11e protocol, and enhancing them to handle local mobility and dynamic requests for bandwidth. The performance evaluation is provided in an emulated environment to show the effectiveness of the presented approach.