A multi - priority application framework for heterogeneous ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks have become, quite common nowadays. The usage of voice and video applications over these networks has created various challenges for research community. Real-time applications require certain guarantees in terms of throughput, delay, jitter and packet loss ratio from the underlying network. Legacy MAC layers do not provide service/traffic differentiation and treat both real-time and best-effort traffic equally. We propose an architecture for heterogeneous ad hoc networks that provides service differentiation. It gives better treatment to high priority traffic. More transmission time is allocated to high priority traffic, which improves its throughput and reduces end-to-end delay. Real-time traffic is allowed to transmit a burst of packets without contending for channel access, known as transmit opportunity (TXOP). A novel route, repair scheme, called AODV real repair (AODV-RR) is also proposed that tries its best to locally repair a broken route and minimize the real-time packet loss under heavy traffic load