On QoS and throughput tradeoffs for tactical ad hoc networks

In wireless ad hoc networking, in particular for tactical networks, the demand for Quality of Service (QoS) provision is increasing. However, to which extent QoS can be provided at reasonable cost is an open issue. To investigate this issue we consider the network capacity, in terms of throughput, that can be supported for best effort and delay sensitive traffic, and a mix of those. That is, our cost measure is related to reduced throughput. In the investigation we consider four different ways of treating the two traffic types. When nothing is done, i.e., all packets are treated equally in the nodes, we have situations where more than half of the capacity is lost. However, by fairly simple methods involving dropping packets and priority queuing much better results are obtained.