End-to-end QoS routing in physically hierarchical wireless ad-hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes dynamically forming a temporary network without any other pre-established infrastructure or centralized devices. Since the dynamic nature of mobile nodes, supporting end-to-end QoS routing in the MANET is very difficult. Most of the proposed protocols for QoS routing in the MANET are designed for flat network architecture with homogeneous capacity of mobile nodes. However, in many real and practical environments applied to MANET, there exist various types of mobile nodes with different computing powers, transmission capacities, roles, and node mobility patterns. Thus, in this paper, by considering these physical heterogeneities of mobile nodes, we propose a novel and simple end-to-end QoS routing mechanism in a physically hierarchical environment. Our proposed algorithm operates an end-to-end signaling for efficient and scalable QoS routing. For the purpose of performance evaluation, we compare our protocol with a well-known ad hoc routing protocol, ad hoc on demand distance vector (AODV), using network simulator (ns-2).