A Survey on Quality of Service in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET)

An ad-hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile hosts forming a temporary network without the aid of any stand-alone infrastructure or centralized administration. Mobile Ad- hoc networks [MANET] are self-organizing and self-configuring multi-hop wireless networks where the structure of the network changes dynamically. To support multimedia applications, it is desirable that an ad hoc network has a provision of Quality of Service (QoS). However, the provision of QoS in a mobile ad hoc network is a challenging task. In this paper, we present a review of the current research related to the provision of QoS in an ad hoc environment. We examine issues and challenges involved in providing QoS in an ad hoc network. We discuss methods of QoS provisioning at different levels including those at the levels of routing, Medium Access Control (MAC), and cross layer. Also, we discuss schemes for admission control and scheduling that are proposed in the literature for the provision of QoS. We compare salient features of various solutions and approaches and point out directions for future work.