A Hierarchical Architecture for QoS Guarantees and Routing in Wireless/Mobile Networks

This paper addresses the problem of providing quality of service (QoS) support and routing for wireless networks in the presence of user mobility. The proposed architecture is hierarchical where cells (the basic region of mobile coverage) are organized into QoS/routing domains. The QoS mechanism is based on our earlier work, which follows the integrated services approach with reservation protocol and class-based queueing used for signaling and scheduling, respectively. The routing mechanism proposed in this paper is integrated with the above QoS mechanism and uses a combination of mobile IP, fast route table updates, and proxy address resolution protocol. The architecture and mechanisms have been implemented in a wireless and mobile test bed that uses Lucent WaveLAN cards. Experimental results from this test bed are presented to show the validity of the architecture and to discuss basic system performance.