See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/261857304

QUALITY OF SERVICE IN WIRELESS NETWORKS

Conference Paper · February 2009

CITATION READS

1 189

3 authors, including:

Wojciech Zabierowski A. Napieralski

Lodz University of Technology Lodz University of Technology
132 PUBLICATIONS   246 CITATIONS    726 PUBLICATIONS   4,523 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Nano modelisation View project

Modeling of non-linear thermal phenomena in electronic systems View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Wojciech Zabierowski on 04 June 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 QUALITY OF SERVICE IN WIRELESS
NETWORKS
KRZYSZTOF WOJTANOWICZ, WOJCIECH ZABIEROWSKI, ANDRZEJ NAPIERALSKI
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ŁÓDŹ, POLAND
Keywords: QoS, Mobile IP, RSVP, MRSVP, SARAH, Integrated Services, Differentiated Services
ABSTRACT - the following article is about the
network Quality of Service issues, which is a set
of technologies that enable to users obtain from
the network predicted level of services basing on
particular rules e.g. throughput, delay and jitter.
An Investigation and comparison of QoS
mechanisms, focusing on the Internet Protocols
has been done here, to analyze and compare
existing solutions. Beginning from wired
environment, where there are already well-
known and well-designed QoS solutions like
IntServ and DiffServ, we focus on the wireless
communications which demands additional
sometimes sophisticated protocols to be able to
effectively handle mobility in communications..
INTRODUCTION TO QOS
In the world of large data transfers,
multimedia on demand and interactive
communications Quality of Service issues became a
significant factor. Networks must provide secure,
predictable, measurable, and sometimes guaranteed
services and ensurance levels. Quality of Service is
a good solution to make the best use of a network
infrastructure increasing its effectiveness and
handling bottlenecks. QoS guarantee means such a
level of services, which enable for the application
to send data with particular speed and deliver it in
particular amount of time. However, what is worth
to mention, QoS is not a miracle solution and can
only be successful under two circumstances:
manageable load and well-designed, scalable
network.
The scope of the project is to investigate the
behavior of Quality of Service mechanisms from
the basic ones going further to wireless
environment which inputs many constraints.
Protocols that operate reliably in wired
communication reveal many shortages and demand
improvement to deal with wireless environment.
Beginning from RSVP, which is a well known,
already implemented reservation protocol, it has
many limitations and became extended to MRSVP.
This is the extension of RSVP dedicated to mobile
communications. Another Mobile Quality of
Service solution under investigation is SARAH,
which stands for selective advanced reservations
based on host movement detection and resource-
aware handoff mechanism. It differs considerably
from MRSVP, but seems to be a good alternative
solution in Mobile IP network. SARAH turns out to
be simple and reliable protocol and in practice not
only safes resources as MRSVP does, but turns out
to be even more reliable.
QOS MECHANISMS
If we want the data stream to obtain desired
QoS, every node on the network must be informed
about that demands. We can do that in two ways:
• Packet labeling – a packet carries information
about the demands.
• Signalization – there’s a special signaling pro-
tocol implemented
That is why two QoS models can be used,
informing the network in different ways:
• Reservation resource basing model
• Class differentiation basing model
Integrated Services model
In that model a special signaling protocol
was implemented and applications call for demands
including: throughput, maximum packet delay
through that protocol. The network node after
having received such information from the protocol
checks for the resource availability and if they exist
for information transport, it reserves them. This is a
good solution unless the generated traffic exceeds
established before amount. Such traffic is being
constantly checked by the network node, and in
case its increase, it is limited to the level of
parameters called before. The main function of
IntServ is End-to-end signaling using RSVP
(Reservation Protocol).
Differentiated Services
Differentiated Services have emerged in the
Internet arena as a Class of Service approach to
providing better than best effort quality, in contrast
to Integrated Services which uses the more
stringent, and complex Quality of Service approach.
DiffServ architecture model divides traffic into a
small number of classes, and allocates resources on
the per-class basis. There are only few classes of
traffic, so the packet’s class can be marked directly
in the packet (because of the bit low size). Purpose
of the “class” treatment: packets are classified and
marked to receive a particular forwarding treatment
(like per hop treatment) on nodes along the
communications path.
RSVP protocol
RSVP data flows can be best described by
sessions, over which data packets flow. A session is
a set of data flows with the same unicast or
multicast destination, and RSVP treats each session
independently. RSVP supports unicast and
multicast sessions. We treat session as some
number of senders talking to some number of
receivers. A flow always originates with a single
sender. Data packets in a particular session are
directed to the same IP destination address or a
generalized destination port. The IP destination
address can be the group address for multicast
delivery or the unicast address of a single receiver.
A generalized destination port can be defined by a
UDP/TCP destination port field, or eventually by
equivalent field in another transport protocol.
Effects of mobility
Mobility of the hosts has a significant impact
on are packet delay, packet loss rate, delay, jitter
and throughput QoS parameters. When a mobile
host moves from one location to another, with an
active connection, the data flow path changes. As a
result, a propagation delay of packets may change.
Also the congestion on routers along the new path
may result in a delay, that is different from that in a
previous path. If the new location into which a
mobile host moves, is overcrowded, the available
bandwidth in the new location my not be sufficient
to provide the throughput it was receiving in the
previous location. In addition, the mobile user may
suffer temporary disruption of service during
handoff process.
Therefore mobile users should adapt to these
changes, as they move with their connections open.
There are some situations, which however happen
very rarely, that a connection can be even dropped
if the minimum QoS requirements of all users
cannot be satisfied.
Taking into account those effects of mobility, a
set of new service classes has been defined. There
are two service classes:
• Mobility dependent – users subscribing to
those service classes may experience changes
in their QoS parameters. As hosts handoff
from one location to another with their con-
nections open.
• Mobility independent – those users are not af-
fected by the mobility of the hosts. But to pro-
vide mobility independent service guarantees,
it is necessary to make resource reservation
from all locations where the mobile host may
visit.
SARAH mechanism
Main idea of SARAH move movement
detection is to use Network Layer 2 functionality to
predict a MH’s next location. Mobile IP was
originally designed to provide Network Layer 3
functionality only. In SARAH, it is assumed, that a
MH can simultaneously detect Layer 2 beacon
frames from multiple wireless access points. One of
the assumptions to enable SARAH movement
detection is that there should be an overlapped area
between two neighboring cells. With the movement
detection scheme, SARAH can predict another BS
of a MH that enters into overlapped area of the two
adjacent wireless cells. This feature enables
SARAH to reduce the number of required PRPs
considerably.
The procedure of handoff looks as follows.
As MH moves from BS1 to BS2, the signal-to-
noise (SNR) of BS1 falls below the cell search
threshold value (CST), wher MH tries to find
another reachable APs with active scanning. Then
the MH can receive L2 beacon frames not only
from BS1, but also from BS2. This causes a trigger
of PRP procedure between BS1 and the predicted
next BS. When the MH reaches the cell switchover
point that the difference between SNR values of
BS1 and BS2 exceeds Delta SNR, the L2 roaming
procedure is initiated.
In order to inform the current BS that a
MH has come into the overlapped area, where L2
beacon frames from multiple BSs can be detected, a
notifying message is sent from the MH to the
current BS. This message contains the new BSs
MAC addresses obtained from the beacon frames.
In SARAH, each BS has a neighboring mapping
table that binds IP and MAC addresses of all the
neighboring BSs. Thus, the current BS can start the
establishment of PRP with the predicted BS using
an IP address in the neighboring mapping table.
 Figure 1: A simple simulation of Mobile Users’ communication in Wireless Environment prepared to
gather Quality of Service data
Figure 2: Available track on parameters of
selected mobile host
SIMULATION SCENARIO
In order to simulate the wireless
environment a Java application (Fig. 1) has been
prepared to present the mobility and gather some
numerical data in Mobile IP network. As can be
seen on the attached graph, a scenario consists of a
set of seven Access Points with a cell of diameter of
180m and seven Mobile Users moving with random
speed, and random direction, but perpendicular to
the net.
An application gives the possibility to
observe the selected access point and then each
time a Mobile user enters the particular cell, it is
highlighted green color indicating, that the user is
in the range of particular cell. Figure 2 indicates
which parameters can be tracked on real-time.
Similarly we can focus on a particular
Mobile User (choosing it from a list) showing then,
which AP range it is in contact with. Additionally
each Mobile User can be switched between activity
taken, like Voice or Video Communications, setting
different priority levels typical to Quality of Service
issues. There are two possible QoS models to
choose from: MRSVP and SARAH. When some
Access Point is not able to assign a bandwidth, due
to lack of resources, it is indicated with relevant
warning in appropriate area box.
Below are some numerical values included in
the Java language code:
• The Base station initial capacity is: 2Mbps
(2048 kbps)
• It is possible to choose type of traffic. Mobile
users initially take 56 kbps for conversation. It
is possible to choose video service for any
mobile user which takes 1024 kbps of
bandwidth. Moreover higher priority level is
assigned for video transfer compared to
talk/data communication.
• We do not focus on any errors in the
simulation. There are special mechanisms that
deal with error correction, like FEC, CRCs
etc. but this is not the scope of the simulation.
 RESULTS AND SUMMARY
The results are being displayed on four area
boxes and four text boxes. For instance, the average
number of visible base stations from a point of view
of selected Mobile user is being calculated real-
time. Similarly, the average number of mobile users
in selected cell is constantly calculated during
simulation process. All the time application
indicates active and passive reservations and
displays the current cell number in range of a
mobile host. Finally blocking and completion
counts are gathered. Above results are needed to
calculate and compare our final QoS results:
Reservation blocking rate, and reservation session
completion rate.
Figure 3 Graphical simulation results for both
algorithms with high network load
It is worth to mention that application can be
extended and worked out further for future use.
Java code gives the possibility on doing it. The
application consists of Mobile_User class which
can be extended and added another methods to
obtain desired results.
The results (presented on Fig. 3) show better
completion rate for SARAH algorithm especially
when the network load is high and very high.
However blocking numbers are higher and differ
considerably between individual users in case of
SARAH. This indicates, that SARAH algorithm
should be further tested and improved.
Abbreviations
MH – Mobile host
AP – Access Point
PRP – Predictive Routing Protocol
BS – Base Station
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] http://searchvoip.techtarget.com
[2]
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/5850/15596/0072219
9.pdf?arnumber=722199
[3]
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_1/qos/con
figuration/guide/qcdconmg.html
View publication stats
[4]
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/i
to_doc/qos.htm
[5]
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/jon/mmbook/book/no
de40.html
[6] http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~jain/cis788-
99/ftp/qos_products/index.html
[7] Y. Bernet, R. Yavatkar, P. Ford, F. Baker, L.
Zhang, M. Speer, R. Braden, B. Davie, J.
Wroclawski, and E. Felstaine, “A framework for
integrated services operation over diffserv
networks.” draft-ietf-issll-diffserv-rsvp-04.txt,
March 2000.
[8] S. Shenker, C. Partridge, and R. Guerin,
“Specification of guaranteed quality of service.”
RFC 2212, September 1997.
[9] J. Wroclawski, “Specification of the controlled-
load network element service.” RFC 2211,
September 1997.
[10]
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/jon/mmbook/book/no
de42.html
[11]
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/jon/mmbook/book/no
de43.html
[12] K. Nichols, S.Blake, F. Baker, and D.Black,
“Definition of the differentiated services field
(DS field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 headers.” RFC
2474, December 1998.
[13] Y. Bernet, S. Blake, D. Grossman, and A.
Smith, “An informal management model for
diffserv
routers.” draft-ietf-diffserv-model-04.txt, July 2000.
[14] V. Jacobson, K. Nichols, and K. Poduri, “An
expedited forwarding PHB.” RFC 2598, June 1999.
[15] http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds7-
2/mobileip.html
[16] Mobile Networking Through Mobile
IP.http://computer.org/internet/v2n1/perkins.htm
[17] RFC 2002 - IP Mobility Support.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2002.txt. October 1996.
[18] Nomadicity: How Mobility Will Affect the
Protocol Stack.
http://computer.org/internet/v2n1/nomad.htm.
[19] International Journal of Communication
Systems : “Selective advance reservations based on
host movement detection and resource-aware
handoff” Kyounghee Lee , Myungchul Kim ,
Chansu Yu , Ben Lee , Seunghhil Hong