Hybrid quality of service architecture for wireless/mobile environment

Provision of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for multimedia applications over IP networks is rapidly becoming a critical research and design issue, especially within the radio access segment of the next generation wireless/mobile environment. While the simple and scalable Differentiated Services (DiffServ) QoS control model is suitable for the core part of the network, more explicit, admission and reservation based QoS mechanisms are required in the wireless access segment of the network where the resources available and the levels of traffic aggregation render the DiffSery principles less effective. We present a suitable hybrid QoS architecture framework, and then study the relevant issues further for a radio access network based on IEEE 802.11 WLAN with 802.11e QoS extensions.