QoS Management in MANETs Using Norm-Governed Agent Societies

摘要

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are self-created and self-organized by a collection of mobile nodes, interconnected by multi-hop wireless paths in a strictly peer-to-peer fashion. Such networks offer unique benefits and versatility with respect to bandwidth spatial reuse, intrinsic fault tolerance, and low-cost rapid deployment. However, Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning to applications running in such networks is intrinsically difficult. In this paper, we consider a QoS framework for MANETs which monitors network resources and application requirements, and feeds information to agents, who coordinate efficient resource allocation on a social basis (in this case, decision-making according to normative policies and protocols). Thus we propose a framework for QoS management in MANETs which converges network-centric events, metrics and parameters with organizational intelligence offered by norm-governed multi-agent systems, as a step towards realising a vision of ubiquitous networking.