Determining quality of service (QoS) routing for mobile ad hoc networks

A method for determining a route from a source node to a destination node in a mobile ad hoc network comprising a plurality of intermediate mobile nodes between the source node and the destination node, the method comprising:

• at the source node, transmitting a quality-of-service (QoS) route request to discover routing to the destination node based upon a QoS parameter;
• at each intermediate node, determining whether the node can support the requested QoS parameter of the QoS route request and, if so, forwarding the QoS route request to one of other intermediate nodes and the destination node, and temporarily reserving node resources for QoS route requests having supportable QoS parameters;
• at the destination node, upon receiving the QoS route request, generating a reply to the source node;
• at the source node, selecting a route to the destination node based upon replies from the destination node;
• at the source node, transmitting route confirmations to intermediate nodes on the selected route before transmitting data thereover;
• and
• at the intermediate nodes and the destination node, detecting whether the node can continue to support the requested QoS parameter of the QoS route request and, if not, generating a QoS error notification to the source node.

A mobile ad hoc network comprising:

• a plurality of mobile nodes;
• and
• a plurality of wireless communication links connecting the plurality of mobile nodes together;
• each mobile node comprising
• a communications device to wirelessly communicate with other nodes of the plurality of nodes via the wireless communication links, and
• a controller to route communications via the communications device, and comprising:
• a route discovery unit to transmit quality-of-service (Qos) route requests to other nodes to discover routing to a destination node based upon at least one QOS parameter, the route request including a flow identifier and a QoS link metric,
• a route request processing unit to determine whether the node can support a requested QoS parameter of a QoS route request and to update the QoS link metric,
• a temporary resource reservation table containing temporary node resource reservations for QoS route requests having supportable QoS parameters,
• a route metric formation unit to generate QoS route metrics based upon updated QoS link metrics in replies from nodes with node resource reservations, and
• a route selection unit to select a route to the destination node based upon the QoS route metrics and to transmit route confirmations to nodes on a selected route before transmitting data thereover.