On the Quality of Service Routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

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along the path as well as resolving the scheduling of free slots. This problem is an
NP-complete and thus requires a heuristic approach. To support fast rerouting during
path failures (e.g., a topological change), the bandwidth routing protocol maintains secondary paths. When the primary path fails, the secondary route is used (i.e., becomes
the primary route) and another secondary is discovered. A similar algorithm has been
proposed by Lin and Liu [24] where an end-to-end bandwidth calculation and bandwidth allocation scheme is also used to assign link bandwidth. The algorithm in [24]
also maintains secondary and ternary paths between source and destination for the use
in re-routing when the primary path fails.
In [26], an on-demand QoS routing protocol based on AODV for TDMA-based
MANETs was proposed. A QoS-aware route reserves bandwidth from source to destination by reserving free time slots. In the route discovery process of AODV, a distributed
algorithm is used to calculate the available bandwidth on a hop-by-hop basis and using the
RREQ/RREP query cycle as shown in Figure 4.4a and b where node n4 initiates the route
discovery process. When a route fails, a route error message (RERR) is sent back to the
source as illustrated in Figure 4.4c. Only the destination node can reply to a route request
(RREQ) message that has come along the path with sufficient bandwidth. If anintermediate node learns of such a path, RREQ messages received by this intermediate node can also
be sent back by this intermediate node, hence quicker responses can be obtained. This is
explained in Figure 4.4d,e, and f where node n1 replied to the RREQ and data start flowing
on the returned path. If the RREQ is received by a node with inadequate bandwidth, it will
be dropped by the intermediate nodes. The protocol can handle limited mobility by restoring broken paths and it is suited for small MANETs with short routes.
In [2], a bandwidth reservation scheme is also used to provide QoS guarantees in
MANETs. A route discovery protocol is proposed, which is able to find a route with a
given bandwidth (represented by number of slots). The proposed protocol can reserve
routes while addressing both the hidden-terminal and exposed-terminal problems.
Unlike previous protocols, this protocol addresses the previous two problems by not
assuming that the bandwidth of a link can be determined independently of its neighboring links. Recall that a QoS request is represented in terms of number of slots. Figure 4.5
shows an example of how bandwidth reservations are applied in this protocol. The QoS
route discovery is an on-demand source routing basis, and works similar to the dynamic
source routing (DSR) protocol on disseminating route-searching packets. Take the path
from A to C going through node B. In Figure 4.5a, the white slots associated with each
node are free and the gray slots are busy. Matching the free slots between nodes, we
obtain five common free time slots, that is, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 between A and B and four common free time slots, that is, 3, 4, 5, 6 between B and C. In Figure 4.5b, an attempt is made
to make a reservation from A to C with three slots. Unfortunately, this is not achievable
for obvious reasons. Hence, the possible amount of reservation from A to C is only two
slots as shown in Figure 4.5c and the situation cannot be improved, unless we change the
assignment for A.
In [27], an AODV variant protocol, called QoSAODV, is proposed. Similar to [2],
QoSAODV incorporates slot scheduling to find QoS routes over the network. The
differences between [27] and [2] are that the protocol in [27] uses an integrated route
discovery and bandwidth reservation protocol. Unlike other path finding and route