A QoS enabled MAC protocol for multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks

A medium access control (MAC) technique for multi-hop wireless networks with quality of service (QoS) assurance is introduced The proposed protocol deals with most of the hidden node problems in a multi-hop environment and also provides service differentiation for various types of traffic: real-time constant bit rate (CBR) traffic, real-time variable bit rate (VBR) traffic, and non-real-time datagram traffic, by guaranteeing bounded delay for real-time traffic, at the same time avoiding lockout of datagram traffic. It uses a distributed mechanism of scheduling and reserving the channel access for real-time sessions. Transmission of datagram or starting packet of a new realtime session is granted only after checking the reservation such that they do not affect the scheduled ongoing real-time sessions. The protocol has been implemented and tested using the VINT Network Simulator 2 (NS2). The performance evaluation and comparison confirm the improved QoS features and multimedia support compared to various existing QoS enabled MAC protocols.