QoS Mechanisms for Opaque MANETs

This paper discusses the challenges in and presents a solution to providing end-to-end (e2e) QoS assurances in heterogenous ad hoc networks. While the design of QoS mechanisms for wireless networks in general is a challenging task, the challenges are further compounded when the characteristics of intermediate network segments are not observable from the originating segment, and have to be treated as "opaque" networks. In military MANETs (e.g., Future Combat Systems (FCS) networks), to multi-level security (MLS) separation makes it impractical to impossible to pass information about the actual path taken by flows between same-level "red" security enclaves on different nodes in the insecure "black" network. In this paper, we address this challenge and design an e2e QoS mechanism that can provide service assurances to flows that need to traverse "opaque" network segments en-route their destination. Our contribution is two-fold: (a) we provide a design of an e2e QoS assurance mechanism in wireless heterogeneous networking environments wherein the characteristics of intermediate network may not be known to the originating segment and (b) we use discrete event simulation techniques to analyse and illustrate the potential/strengths of the proposed QoS solution