QoS Support in Multi-Link and Multi-Rate Systems

In a military communications environment, multiple communication links could exist between senders and receivers. This feature enhances communication connection reliability and throughput. Since each link may not use the same type of device or transmission method and links' characteristics may not be the same, sometimes, the link availability and link data rate could fluctuate significantly, which causes an unstable communication connection. Fundamental challenges of taking advantage of multi-link connections are how to dynamically and seamlessly maintain and control desired levels of quality of service (QoS) while using different links and how to satisfy the diversity of applications and their QoS requirements with appropriate delivery methods. In this paper, we propose a dynamic diffserv-based adaptive queue management scheme (DDAQ) that includes a QoS and link status aware data dispatch mechanism to fully utilize the multilink capacity and to realize better QoS support