Verifying Delivered QoS in Multihop Wireless Networks

The question that we consider here is the following: "How can a source verify the quality of service (QoS) experienced by its packet(s) at each hop to the destination in a multihop wireless network?" For example, if Bob needs to forward packets within some maximum delay of delta _B , how can the source verify that Bob in fact forwarded the packets within this bound? Answering this question will enable innovations in multihop wireless network deployments, where nodes may receive payment not only for forwarding packets but also for meeting some QoS guarantees. In this paper, we present protocols that enable verification of delivered QoS for individual packets, as well as verification of statistical QoS for groups of packets. The protocols are proven to be cheat proof. We also provide expressions for the minimum verifiable delay.