Bandwidth routing support for wireless multihop networks

Abstract

The idea of mobile computing service is to provide a ubiquitous information environment. However, the present mobile ad hoc networks still can't support real-time transmission very effectively. In other words, the capability of supporting QoS guarantee has become a very important issue. IEEE 802.11 PCF adopts the polling scheme to provide time-bounded traffic services, which is not suitable in multihop networks. Moreover, due to mobility and traffic dynamics, the network resource management is more difficult. Thus, QoS support in such an environment is a challenge. Specifically, path bandwidth calculation is the first key element. All the bandwidth routing papers we referred to were using TDMA. However, they are restricted in TDMA systems and somehow complicated in path bandwidth calculation. We propose a simple path bandwidth calculation solution that can be used for any kinds of MAC protocols. It is also easy to implement call admission control and to combine with bandwidth routing algorithms. The simulation results illustrate that the statistical error rates of our path bandwidth calculation are within an acceptable range. By path bandwidth calculation, bandwidth routing algorithm is also developed to achieve the objective of supporting QoS in wireless multihop networks effectively. (8 pages)