| In this dissertation we investigate the flow control problem in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). More specifically, we present two schemes to perform flow control in a mobile wireless environment. In the first scheme, we introduce a macro model of MANETs that resembles a wired network. Through the macro model, existing wired flow control techniques are applied to wireless networks. However, this approach requires centralized control to gather network information to construct the macro model. Therefore, we introduce a second scheme. Distributed bottleneck flow control uses techniques from both bottleneck flow control and bandwidth balancing in Distributed-Queue-Dual-Bus (DQDB). In MANETs, every node monitors its channel condition and only uses local information to allocate its residual capacity. By constraining nodes to acquire only a fraction of the available bandwidth, the proposed scheme adapts to the dynamic nature of MANETs and provides fair bandwidth access to flows in the network. The second scheme is fully distributed and is more suitable than the centralized technique for rapidly changing MANETs. |
