Quality of service among IP-based heterogeneous networks

The third generation communication system known as International Mobile Telecommunication-2000/Universal Mobile Telecommunication System will support a wide range of information services. Services may include voice, data, video and multimedia communication operating at bit rates up to 2 Mb/s over the air interface. They are also expected to be Internet Protocol (IP) based. The combination of new and more bandwidth demanding services and quality-of-service (QoS) requirements places increased demand on the available radio spectrum resources. Additional radio capacity will be needed in order to support IP traffic, especially in hot-spot areas. In this article, QoS architectures and techniques are examined for supporting scalable end-to-end QoS over IP-based heterogeneous networks.