Dynamic QoS negotiation for next-generation wireless communications systems

Users in next generation wireless networks are expected to be highly dynamic while maintaining connectivity through different devices with different processing and communication capabilities. In wireless environments, bandwidth is scarce and channel conditions are time-varying. To guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) to users roaming between heterogeneous wireless networks, a dynamic QoS negotiation mechanism, which allows users to dynamically negotiate their service-levels with the network, is required. Several protocols for dynamic service level negotiation have been proposed, each focusing on a particular mode. This paper presents an overview of these protocols and discusses their limitations. To alleviate these shortcomings, a dynamic QoS negotiation scheme to allow users to change their service levels in response to changes in both network conditions and their own resource requirements is proposed. In the proposed scheme, upon an intra-domain handoff of a mobile node, the visited access point consults the previously used access point to confirm the legitimacy of the service negotiation request issued by the mobile node. The performance of the proposed scheme has been investigated and compared with other dynamic negotiation approaches. It was demonstrated that the proposed scheme outperforms the state-of-the-art method, in terms of the signaling overhead and data storage, at the expense of a slight increase in the overall negotiation delay.