Formalization of network quality-of-service requirements

The provision of network Quality-of-Service (network QoS) in wireless (ad-hoc) networks is a major challenge in the development of future communication systems. Before designing and implementing these systems, the network QoS requirements are to be specified. Existing approaches to the specification of network QoS requirements are mainly focused on specific domains or individual system layers. In this paper, we present a holistic, comprehensive formalization of network QoS requirements, across layers. QoS requirements are specified on each layer by defining QoS domain, consisting of QoS performance, reliability, and guarantee, and QoS scalability, with utility and cost functions. Furthermore, we derive preorders on multi-dimensional QoS domains, and present criteria to reduce these domains, leading to a manageable subset of QoS values that is sufficient for system design and implementation. We illustrate our approach by examples from the case study Wireless Video Transmission.