Planning and Management of QoS-Based Mobile Wireless Networks

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are expected to play a vital role in the network-centric warfare paradigm. Among the many technical challenges that must be solved before MANETs can fulfill their envisioned role is the issue of network management. Policy-based network management is an effective tool for ensuring that users receive the Quality of Service(QoS), security, and other network capabilities they need. Policy-based networks employ intelligence in the form of rules to deal with situations that are likely to occur. When the policy-based network management scheme is targeted toward achieving QoS performance goals, the rules are designed to regulate both users and network resources to provide differentiated services among users. MANETs must employ a distributed approach to network management in which the individual nodes actively participate in the network management process. The proposed research is directed toward the development of prototype tools for expressing performance goals, monitoring network conditions, and taking actions to adapt network performance in real time. The results of the proposed effort will provide an architectural foundation for developing cognitive networks capable of allocating network resources to applications in an optimal manner in order to meet end-to-end performance goals