In this paper, we present a novel packet delivery mechanism called multi-path and multi-speed routing protocol (MMSPEED) for probabilistic QoS guarantee in wireless sensor networks. The QoS provisioning is performed in two quality domains, namely, timeliness and reliability. Multiple QoS levels are provided in the timeliness domain by guaranteeing multiple packet delivery speed options. In the reliability domain, various reliability requirements are supported by probabilistic multipath forwarding. All these for QoS provisioning are realized in a localized way without global network information by employing localized geographic packet forwarding augmented with dynamic compensation, which compensates the local decision inaccuracy as a packet travels towards its destination. This way, MMSPEED can guarantee end-to-end requirements in a localized way, which is desirable for scalability and adaptability to large scale dynamic sensor networks. Simulation results show that MMSPEED provides QoS differentiation in both reliability and timeliness domains and, as a result, significantly improves the effective capacity of a sensor network in terms of number of flows that meet both reliability and timeliness requirements.

Building real-time applications on 802.11 wireless networks is challenging because the medium access protocol is distributed and nodes contend for the channel nondeterministically. So far all attempts at providing real-time services in 802.11 require restrictive traffic assumptions such as periodicity. In this paper we describe distributed admission control, a modification to 802.11 that, when used with distributed prioritization, provides real-time guarantees for aperiodic packets. We show that barring external errors such as interference on the channel or incorrect priority scheduling this protocol guarantees deadlines will be met.