A practical approach to QoS routing for wireless networks

Abstract

We study QoS routing in wireless networks. We impose a structure on the network to combat the far-reaching effects of interference. We observe that there is little difference between routes through shared interference domains; instead the choices exist between routes through different domains. Based on this observation, we suggest partitioning the network into non-overlapping clusters where each cluster represents an interference domain. Routing algorithms operate over the cluster-level topology and use shortest paths within the clusters. Clustering decouples the constraints allowing for estimates of the available capacity within a cluster via local measurements. We present a routing algorithm that chooses amongst cluster-level paths to accommodate a flow with certain QoS requirements. An admission control policy checks the feasibility of the suggested route and refines our estimates of available capacity.