QoS Provisioning for Wireless Ad Hoc Data Networks*

Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning for wireless ad hoc networks is a difficult problem due to the self organizing nature of such networks, and due to strict energy constraints which greatly restrict the signaling overhead. This paper discusses distributed resource management techniques for QoS guarantees in ad hoc code-division multiple-access (CDMA) networks. In CDMA networks, resource management represents a key element in providing QoS for data services. In particular, power control has been shown to be crucial for maintaining good performance in cellular CDMA. With tight node energy constraints in wireless ad hoc networks, power control can greatly improve the network performance. On the other hand, the network performance will depend on the current network topology which is influenced by routing. In this paper, joint power control and routing is proposed to maximize the QoS perceived by a data session, where the measure of data QoS is taken to be the energy required for the transmission of one bit of information.