A survey of QoS routing solutions for mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), the provision of quality of service (QoS) guarantees is much more challenging than in wireline networks, mainly due to node mobility, multihop communications, contention for channel access, and a lack of central coordination. QoS guarantees are required by most multimedia and other time- or error-sensitive applications. The difficulties in the provision of such guarantees have limited the usefulness of MANETs. However, in the last decade, much research attention has focused on providing QoS assurances in MANET protocols. The QoS routing protocol is an integral part of any QoS solution since its function is to ascertain which nodes, if any, are able to serve applications?? requirements. Consequently, it also plays a crucial role in data session admission control. This document offers an up-to-date survey of most major contributions to the pool of QoS routing solutions for MANETs published in the period 1997??2006. We include a thorough overview of QoS routing metrics, resources, and factors affecting performance and classify the protocols found in the literature. We also summarize their operation and describe their interactions with the medium access control (MAC) protocol, where applicable. This provides the reader with insight into their differences and allows us to highlight trends in protocol design and identify areas for future research.