Providing quality‐of‐service (QoS) assurances in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is difficult due to node mobility, contention for channel access, a lack of centralised coordination, and the unreliable nature of the wireless channel. QoS‐aware routing (QAR) and admission control (AC) protocols comprise two of the most important components of a system attempting to provide QoS guarantees in the face of the above‐mentioned difficulties.
This paper presents a comparative study, utilising a realistic shadow fading channel, of the performance of several state‐of‐the‐art amalgamated QAR‐AC protocols, which are designed for providing throughput guarantees to applications. The advantages and drawbacks of their particular features are highlighted. For an environment where link quality varies rapidly, the results of the study highlight the ineffectiveness of previously‐proposed methods of relying merely on the success of route discovery to perform AC, of relying on the exceeding of the MAC layer retransmission count for link failure detection, of existing congestion detection schemes and of careful re‐admission of data sessions rather than fast re‐routing after shadowing‐induced link failures. Based on the lessons learnt, design guidelines for future QAR and AC protocols operating in a mobile shadow‐fading‐afflicted environment are presented. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.