An agent based approach to QoS routing in mobile ad-hoc networks

Multimedia applications require stringent QoS (quality of service) requirements such as guaranteed bandwidth, bounded end-to-end delays, bounded jitters, etc. Hence there is a necessity to find QoS aware paths for data transfer to satisfy the application requirements. This is very complex to achieve in MANETs (mobile ad-hoc networks) due to its inherent characteristics such as dynamic topology, node mobility, scarce resources, etc. In this paper we propose a scheme to perform on-demand QoS routing in MANETs by using agents. The scheme uses two types of agents: static agents and mobile agents. The static agents collect the resource information of the neighboring nodes. The mobile agents roam in the network hosted by a source to find the QoS path (bandwidth and delay constrained) by interacting with static agents. The scheme is simulated in various network scenarios to test its operation effectiveness. The proposed method offers adaptability, flexibility and supports component based software engineering concepts such as maintainability, customization, software reuse, etc.