Utilizing fault tolerance for achieving QoS in Ad-hoc networks

Abstract

Ad-hoc networks consist of many independent wireless nodes which communicate without the help of an infrastructure. Since this type of networks exhibits a dynamic topology, that is, the nodes move very frequently, it is hard to establish some quality-of-service (QoS) in this scenario. This paper presents an approach which accomplishes this. QoS is guaranteed in the sense that the network either can offer these parameters, or it informs the source that it cannot do this anymore. While this guarantee is not so stringent that the network really can guarantee it in every case, in most cases, a QoS degradation as well as a link break will be announced to the sender beforehand, allowing it and the application to take some counter-measures such as putting the system in a safe state before the QoS degrades.