| Next generations of wireless networks will provide Internet-like services. This provision will be achieved through a seamless integration of different types of wireless networks with different transmission speeds and ranges interconnected through a high-speed backbone. Next generations of wireless networks include Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs), Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WMANs), cellular wide area networks and satellite based communication. The widespread use of wireless networks will increase the deployment of new wireless applications, especially multimedia applications such as video-on-demand, audio-on-demand, voice over IP, streaming media and interactive applications. The provision of a quality experience for the end users requires end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees in terms of bandwidth, delay and delay jitter. In order to provide end-to-end QoS support, we need to provide QoS in the wide area network (the Internet, cellular network), in the last mile distribution system (WMANs), in the wireless LAN and in the wireless PAN. QoS support in wireless networks is a challenging design problem due to the fact that the wireless network bandwidth is a limited and variable resource. Therefore, resource management has to be carefully designed to provide the QoS support in each segment of wireless networks. In this dissertation, we primarily focus on the resource management in WLANs and WMANs.; We propose the Resource Management Architecture as the general framework for analyzing wireless technologies and developing QoS solutions. Resource Management Architecture helps us to identify the QoS problems and provide design guideline of QoS mechanisms.; We have developed QoS Software (Q-Soft) framework a software solution that provides QoS support for voice, video and data in WLANs. Q-Soft not only can operate on IEEE 802.11 WLAN but also other home network technologies such as phoneline network or Ethernet. We have developed the testing procedure of Q-Soft on the real systems.; We have developed IEEE 802.11 association procedure for multimedia applications. The proposed scheme controls delay bound in association process during roaming across wireless LAN cell.; We have developed a scheduling algorithm and admission control policy for IEEE 802.16 WMAN. The proposed solution which is practical and compatible to the IEEE 802.16 standard provides QoS support to different traffic classes.; We believe that the result and methodology presented in this dissertation provides the guideline in design QoS solution in other wireless networks. |
