Providing guaranteed quality communications in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is a tremendously challenging task due to a lack of resources in the network in addition to frequent changes in the network topology due to node mobility. Although extensive research has been done in this area in the context of Internet and other wireless infrastructure networks, their results are hardly, if at all, suitable for MANETs. Providing a Quality of Service (QoS) solution for MANETs requires the interaction and cooperation of several components across all layers of the protocol stack. These components include: QoS routing protocols, an admission control scheme, a resources reservation scheme and a QoS capable medium access control (MAC) protocol. This thesis proposes a framework and protocols to sup...[ Read more ]

Providing guaranteed quality communications in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is a tremendously challenging task due to a lack of resources in the network in addition to frequent changes in the network topology due to node mobility. Although extensive research has been done in this area in the context of Internet and other wireless infrastructure networks, their results are hardly, if at all, suitable for MANETs. Providing a Quality of Service (QoS) solution for MANETs requires the interaction and cooperation of several components across all layers of the protocol stack. These components include: QoS routing protocols, an admission control scheme, a resources reservation scheme and a QoS capable medium access control (MAC) protocol. This thesis proposes a framework and protocols to support QoS in MANETs on a per class basis using Differentiated Services framework. This proposed scheme integrates the above-mentioned components while taking into account the characteristics of MANETs, viz., bandwidth constraint and dynamic topologies to provide differentiation between two service levels: premium guaranteed service or expedited forwarding and a best effort service. Extensive simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed framework in providing QoS under different traffic loads and mobility patterns.