Supporting QoS traffic at the network layer in multi-hop wireless mobile networks

Supporting real-time and quality-of-service (QoS) traffic in multi-hop wireless mobile networks is challenging due to the high level of dynamism involved. In this paper, we propose a network layer solution in the form of a hybrid routing protocol to enable QoS traffic support in this class of networks. Our proposed protocol combines link state topology updates, source routing and on demand link cost dissemination to concurrently support multiple classes of QoS and normal flows. Our protocol provides for QoS traffic by intelligent path selection at the source nodes based on the required QoS parameters/levels and dynamically adapting the paths as network topology and conditions change. This solution does not require any other layers/components in the network stack to be QoS-aware and is therefore readily deployable over existing networks. We present experimental results from a simulation study on the performance of our protocol. Our results show that the proposed solution can provide efficient QoS traffic support in small-to-medium sized mobile networks, where up to 90% improvement in QoS metrics are observed in certain experiments.