Selected Issues of QoS Provision in Heterogenous Military Networks

Tactical ad-hoc networks are evolving today towards complex heterogeneous networks in terms of architecture, protocols and security. Due to the difference in network resources and reliability, end-to-end quality of service provisioning becomes very challenging. If we also take into account communication issues such as unpredictable connectivity, preferential forwarding for special traffic classes, intermittency due to node or communication link failure, the problem is further aggravated. In this article, we examine the major challenges that must be solved in order to provide efficient QoS provisioning in the heterogeneous network. Finally we describe QoS-aware mechanisms for inter-domain and intra-domain heterogeneous networks, also including real-time services provision in highly mobile environments.