QoS assurances through class selection and proportional differentiation in wireless networks

Quality-of-service (QoS) in wireless ad hoc networks is adversely affected by node mobility, changing network topologies, and uncontrolled medium contention. The paper addresses the challenges in concurrently providing a wide range of end-to-end throughput and delay assurances in such networks. The proposed solution is based on the neighborhood proportional delay differentiation (NPDD) service model. With NPDD, applications achieve their desired end-to-end QoS using dynamic class selection (DCS) algorithms. With simulations in various distinct mobile network scenarios, we demonstrate the significantly better QoS assurances achieved with the proposed mechanism as compared with best effort and strict priority approaches. With game theoretic concepts, we model DCS applications in an NPDD network as selfish players in a noncooperative game. For such games, we prove for single-hop and multihop NPDD networks the existence of an equilibrium, the feasibility of an equilibrium, and the guaranteed convergence to a feasible equilibrium when one exists.