Routing mechanisms for QoS support and energy-aware optimization in wireless mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

The general field of mobile ad hoc networking is still in its infancy. Particularly, the challenge of providing quality-of-service (QoS) support for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is an open problem and remains relatively uncharted territory. Recently, because of the rising popularity of multimedia applications and potential commercial usage of MANETs, QoS support in MANETs has become an unavoidable task. This thesis focuses on QoS routing that is an essential part of the QoS architecture. The goal of such QoS routing is to select communication paths that have sufficient resources to meet as many of the QoS requirements of all the admitted connections as possible. In this thesis, we investigate two kinds of routing mechanisms for QoS support in MANETs. First, we propose a novel on-demand QoS routing protocol, SBR [Signal-tointerference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and Bandwidth Routing], which explicitly fulfills both SINR and bandwidth requirements from different multimedia users in TDMA-based ad hoc mobile networks. With SBR, bandwidth reservation is made by allocating time slots and SINR reservation is ensured by assigning adequate powers at the intermediate nodes between a source and a destination. The power-assignment method used in SBR supports finding routes that satisfy the SINR requirements as well as reduces the level of prevailing interference that necessarily occurs in multiple-access wireless networks. SBR also has a new backup capability of establishing multiple paths, even for a single connection, when the route search cannot find a single path that supports the QoS requirements, which contributes to reducing the probability of call denials in constructing the route due to a lack of suitable paths. Extensive simulations show that SBR significantly reduces the ratio of unsuccessful calls with modest routing overhead. Second, we propose a novel on-demand QoS routing protocol, EDR [bit Energy-to-interference-plus-noise spectral density ratio ($E_b/I_o$)...