Human-Network Interface for QoS Management in Ad hoc Networks

Though the network quality-of-service (QoS) metrics are defined in terms of technical parameters (e.g., delay, jitter, bandwidth), they are rather subjective when it comes to the end user. Oftentimes, the end user finds it difficult to express his desired QoS in such technical parameters though he has a fair idea of what QoS he desires. In this paper, we propose a simple interface that is primarily meant for tactical network implementation within a military setting of network-centric warfare. The interface translates the user inputs to networking parameters that are used by various layers of the protocol stack. In particular, we show how the media access control (MAC) and routing strategies change in an ad hoc network when the user changes his priority i.e., trades delay performance to maximize the lifetime of the network. We show also how the user supplied parameters translate to network parameters at the MAC and routing layer and the strategies are changed to incorporate the use inputs and yield the desired QoS. We conduct simulation experiments based on ns-2. Results demonstrate how delay, throughput, and network lifetime are affected when the different levels of QoS are required.