A Distributed QoS-Guaranteed Multiple Access Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Based on the concept of random contention and collision resolution, a distributed QoS-guaranteed multiple access (QMA) protocol for mobile ad hoc networks is proposed to support multimedia service and multihop architecture. In the protocol, nodes with real-time traffic have higher priority to access channel than those with non-real-time traffic by broadcasting forecast bursts (FB) in earlier group differentiating slots. Meanwhile, various traffic is scheduled according to its traffic category, priority level, delay requirement and the earliest deadline first (EDF) principle. For each kind of traffic, the node with higher priority can broadcasts more FBs to win contention reservation and use channel successfully. Simulation results show that the QMA protocol outperforms the IEEE 802.11e EDCF protocol in terms of throughput, message discard rate and average packet delay, and it can provide differentiated QoS support for different traffic with different priorities in multihop wireless networks.