Layered view of QoS issues in IP-based mobile wireless networks

With the convergence of wireless communication and IP-based networking technologies, future IP-based wireless networks are expected to support real-time multimedia. IP services over wireless networks (e.g. wireless access to Internet) enhance the mobility and flexibility of traditional IP network users. Wireless networks extend the current IP service infrastructure to a mix of transmission media, bandwidth, costs, coverage, and service agreements, requiring enhancements to the IP protocol layers in wireless networks. Furthermore, QoS provisioning is required at various layers of the IP protocol stack to guarantee different types of service requests, giving rise to issues related to cross-layer design methodology. This paper reviews issues and prevailing solutions to performance enhancements and QoS provisioning for IP services over mobile wireless networks from a layered view.