Addressing the requirements of QoS management for wireless ad hoc networks

Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning and management in ad hoc networks remains a challenging task. Existing research focuses either on providing QoS or on network management, in ad hoc networks. However, a comprehensive approach to QoS management in ad hoc networks, i.e. network management in support of service differentiation, QoS robustness, and network survivability is still lacking. In this paper, we survey the existing literature on ad hoc network management from a QoS perspective. We identify policy-based management as a promising approach for QoS provisioning and management in ad hoc networks, and describe the components that we believe are crucial for effective functioning of such a policy-based framework. Our initial experimental results in assessing signaling overhead and response time for network management in ad hoc networks support the choice of a hybrid policy architecture that combines outsourcing and provisioning policy distribution models.