A novel multiple access protocol with QoS support for mobile ad hoc networks

Based on the concept of random contention and collision resolution, a QoS-based multiple access (QMA) protocol for ad hoc networks is proposed to support multimedia service and multi-hop architecture. In this paper, the traffic is divided into two groups with different QoS requirements, namely realtime traffic and non real-time traffic. According to the protocol, nodes with real-time traffic have higher priority to access channel than those with non realtime traffic by broadcasting forecast bursts (FB) in earlier contention slots. Meanwhile, real-time traffic is scheduled according to its delay and the earliest deadline first.(EDF) principle. Through simulations, it is shown that the QMA protocol outperforms the Carrier Sensing Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol in terms of throughput, message discard rate and average packet delay, and the QMA protocol can provide differentiated QoS guarantees for traffic in multi-hop networks.