A QoS-aware routing scheme for mobile ad hoc networks

Node mobility in ad hoc networks results in frequent topology changes, inducing a high route failure rate between source-destination pairs. During an on-going packet flow, mobility-induced route failures can cause excessive packet loss, unpredictable delays and packet jitter. In this paper, we introduce QMR/PR, a flexible QoS-sensitive routing framework for mobile ad hoc networks, which addresses the problems caused by mobility-induced path failures. A particularly promising feature of QMR/PR is its ability to signficantly reduce both random and correlated packet losses. To provide accurate and reliable performance evaluation results, we integrated the functional components of QMR/PR into the QualNet simulation software, allowing us to conduct an extensive performance evaluation in a realistic networking architecture, including all layers of the protocol stack. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework and show that, compared to single-path routing, QMR/PR can reduce packet loss by 42-84 percent depending on the networking environment. It is also shown that QMR/PR improves end-to-end delay and packet jitter, as compared to single-path routing, while simultaneously reducing routing overhead.