QoS Conflict Resolution in Ad Hoc Networks

Providing Quality of Service in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) is a challenging task due to the unreliability of the wireless medium and mobility. QoS routing is used to find QoS available paths that map QoS requirements, based on network information acquired during the route discovery process, and/ or using periodic monitoring. If the QoS demand goes beyond the network capacity, the call admission procedure generally rejects any incoming QoS request, thus, avoiding quality deterioration of existing QoS flows. However, channel conditions are likely to change and might threaten the QoS provision at any time. Therefore, a strategy is needed to reinstate QoS guarantees when at risk. Whenever Best-Effort traffic deterioration is not applicable or useless, a QoS flow has to be sacrificed for the sake of others. The selection of the victim QoS flow expresses a need for conflict resolution policies. This paper proposes and analyses different conflict resolution policies and their impact on QoS provision in Ad Hoc networks.