Resource Reservation Schemes for IEEE 802.11-Based Wireless Networks: A Survey

IEEE 802.11-based wireless technology is widely applied in many areas, supporting communications where wired devices are not available. However, providing satisfactory QoS is still a challenging topic in 802.11-based wireless networks because of the problems such as error-prone wireless channel condition, power consumption, short of centralised facility, mobility as well as channel contention. For addressing these issues, one feasible solution can be to implement resource reservation for the sessions that require QoS assurances. The responsibility of resource reservation scheme is to make sure that QoS-sensitive sessions get sufficient bandwidth in order to sustain their high performance. Difficulties are already identified for designing resource reservation schemes in both network and MAC layers. However, there is no profound investigation outcome for this kind of QoS mechanism. Therefore, in this paper, we intend to produce a comprehensive survey of resource reservation approaches for IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks. The associated research works are summarised and also classified. Moreover, both the drawbacks and the merits of each kind of resource reservation scheme are highlighted.