Architecture for delay-sensitive communications in mobile optical free-space networks

Mobile optical free space networks are an emerging architecture that can provide high speed connectivity between a ground-based backbone network and mobile users in challenging environments. In such a network traffic could be relayed by airborne or ground routers using wireless optical links. The variable nature of the wireless optical channel complicates support for real-time distributed applications demanding bounds on communication delay. In this paper we present an architecture for provisioning end-to-end statistical delay guarantees in MOFS networks. We describe a delay model that uses a concept of virtual traffic to accommodate link capacity variation. The link delay estimation is integrated with a population-insensitive utilization based flow admission control technique and IP differentiated services. The models and architecture for QoS are presented and the system performance is analyzed