A Multipath QoS Routing with Route Stability for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract Multihop wireless networks have emerged recently as an evolution of wireless network technology and are likely to be the integral part of future communication environment. In this context, support for quality of service (QoS) is becoming an inherent necessity rather than an additional feature of the network. This paper presents a route stability-based multipath QoS routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks to support throughput and delay sensitive real-time applications in these networks. We incorporate a hop-by-hop admission control and a soft resource reservation scheme in a route discovery process to ensure QoS assurance to real-time applications. Further, a simple route stability model is utilized during both route discovery and maintenance phases for selecting QoS routes with higher stability. The reliability of the multiple QoS routes is improved through node disjointness and stability properties of the discovered routes. Following an effective QoS violation detection and route maintenance mechanism, the protocol reduces the frequency of route recovery leading to a significant reduction in QoS disruption. Extensive simulation studies show that the proposed routing protocol can support higher level of QoS in terms of packet delivery ratio, average end-to-end delay, maximum jitter, and overall network throughput.