A quality of service protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes where each node is free to move about arbitrarily. The ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol is one of the well-known and efficient on-demand MANET protocols. AODV currently does not support quality of service (QoS) and also has no load balancing mechanism, the propose some enhancements to the AODV protocol to provide QoS and load balancing features by adding t o extensions to the messages used during route discovery. A detailed packet-layer simulation model is used to study the performance of both the AODV and the QoS-AODV protocols. Important performance measures such as average delay, packet delivery fraction and normalized routing load are used in the comparison. Simulations are presented for networks with 50 mobile nodes with different network loads, delay constraints, topological rate of change and mobility speeds.