QoS management in disadvantaged tactical environments

The tactical Network is one of the major components in DoD Global Information Grid (GIG). The key challenge of quality of service (QoS) management tactical networks is how to deal with negative factors that result from varying network capability demanding and a disadvantaged physical environment. These factors could include network mobility, dynamic network formation, unusual network protocol behaviors, communication channel fading, channel bandwidth fluctuation, as well as platform/application characteristics. This paper investigates the challenges of several well-known QoS management mechanisms in disadvantaged tactical network environments and provides some recommendations on the directions of mitigations and improvements.