A scalable multimedia QoS architecture for ad hoc networks

Communication demands have grown from separate data and voice to integrated multimedia, paving the way to converging fixed, mobile and IP networks. Supporting Multimedia is a challenging task for wireless ad hoc network designers. Multimedia forms high data rate traffic with stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Wireless ad hoc networks are characterized by frequent topology changes, unreliable wireless channel, network congestion and resource contention. Providing scalable QoS is the most important challenge for multimedia delivery over ad hoc networks. We introduce here a provisioning and routing architecture for ad hoc networks which scales well while provisioning QoS. The proposed architecture is analysed using a mix of HTTP, voice and video streaming applications over 54 Mbps 802.11 g-based ad hoc networks. The architecture is simulated and compared to well-known routing protocols using the OPNET Modeller. The results show that our architecture scales well with increase in the network size, and outperforms well-known routing protocols.