Real-time traffic support in heterogeneous mobile networks

Multi-hop mobile wireless networks have been proposed for a variety of applications where support for real-time multimedia services will be necessary. Support for these applications requires that the network is able to offer quality of service (QoS) appropriate for the latency and jitter bounds of the real-time application constraints. In this paper, we analyze the primary challenges of realizing QoS in mobile wireless networks with heterogeneous devices and propose a QoS framework for real-time traffic support. We address the problem in three ways: estimate the path quality for real-time flows, mitigate the impact of node heterogeneity on service performance, and reduce the impact of interfering non-real-time traffic. Specifically, our proposed QoS framework first utilizes a call setup protocol at the IP layer to discover paths for real-time flows, as well as to perform admission control by accurate service quality prediction. The underlying routing protocol also enables transparent path selection among heterogeneous nodes to provide stable paths for real-time traffic delivery. We then use a prioritized MAC protocol to provide priority access for flows with real-time constraints to reduce interference from unregulated non-real-time traffic. We foresee the utility of our proposed solution in heterogeneous mobile networks, such as campus or community-wide wireless networks. In these environments, resource-rich or fixed wireless routers may be leveraged to achieve better service quality when heterogeneity of node capability and movement is significant. Through experimental results, we demonstrate the utility and efficiency of our approach. Yuan Sun received her Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. She worked with Prof. Elizabeth Belding-Royer in the MOMENT Lab. Her thesis work focused on providing QoS for mobile networks. Dr. Sun is currently employed at Google. Elizabeth M. Belding-Royer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Elizabeth’s research focuses on mobile networking, specifically ad hoc and mesh networks, multimedia, monitoring, and advanced service support. She is the founder of the Mobility Management and Networking (MOMENT) Laboratory (moment.cs.ucsb.edu) at UCSB. Elizabeth is the author of over 50 papers related to mobile networking and has served on over 40 program committees for networking conferences. Elizabeth served as the TPC Co-Chair of ACM MobiCom 2005 and IEEE SECON 2005, and is currently on the editorial board for the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. Elizabeth is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, and a 2002 Technology Review 100 award, awarded to the world’s top young investigators. See ebelding for further details. Xia Gao is currently a Staff Engineer at Ubicom. He received his Ph.D of ECE from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001. Before joining Ubicom, he had worked in DoCoMo Communications Laboratory for 4 years where he conducted research on 3G-4G wireless communication system and handset technologies and WiFi systems. He has published more than 30 conference and journal papers. He has chaired several International conferences and served as TPC members for many others. He is a member of IEEE and a honored member of Sigma Xi. James Kempf is a Research Fellow at DoCoMo USA Laboratories. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. Previously, James worked at Sun Microsystems for 13 years, and contributed to numerous research projects involving wireless networking, mobile computing, and service discovery. James is a former member of the Internet Architecture Board, and co-chaired the SEND and Seamoby IETF Working Groups. James continues to be an active contributor to Internet standards in the areas of security and mobility for next generation, Internet protocol-based mobile systems.