Performance evaluation of a mesh-evolving quality-of-service-aware multicast routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

The tremendous amount of multimedia applications running across the wireless communication medium makes quality of service (QoS) a fundamental requirement for mobile ad hoc networks. However, it is not easy to incorporate QoS into these networks. Moreover, the growing number of group-oriented applications also necessitates the efficient utilisation of network resources. The multicast model is a promising technique which can achieve this efficiency by facilitating the inherent broadcast capability of the wireless medium. The mesh-evolving ad hoc QoS multicast (MAQM) routing protocol is developed to address the resource efficiency and QoS problems with one, integrated solution. MAQM achieves multicast efficiency by tracking the availability of resources for each node within its neighbourhood. The QoS status is monitored continuously and announced periodically to the extent of QoS provision. Using these features, MAQM nodes can make their decisions on joining a new multicast session based on the sustainability of their perceived QoS. MAQM also evolves the initial multicast tree into a mesh during the course of an ongoing session to achieve a more robust network topology. Thus, MAQM integrates the concept of QoS-awareness into multicast routing in mobile ad hoc networks. Since ad hoc networks require the protocol control overhead to be as small as possible, we analyse the multicast session establishment process of MAQM to see its impact on the protocol performance in terms of system control overhead. We also evaluate the performance of MAQM through computer simulations using various qualitative and quantitative criteria. The simulation results validate our mathematical analysis of the control overhead and show that MAQM significantly improves multicast efficiency through its QoS-aware admission and routing decisions with an acceptably small overhead. Thus, MAQM shows that QoS is not only essential for, but also applicable to mobile ad hoc networks.     

IP multicast group management for point-to-point local distribution

We examine the applicability of existing IP multicast mechanisms for point-to-point links such as wired and wireless telephone lines. We identify problems such as overhead due to IGMP leave latency and unnecessary probing of hosts, both important issues for power constrained mobile hosts and low bandwidth wireless links. We propose alternative mechanisms that preserve the IP multicasting model, but employ join–leave messages to track group membership. We describe the implementation requirements of our mechanisms and compare them to existing ones with respect to performance, mobile power efficiency, interoperability, robustness and implementation complexity, demonstrating that the join–leave approach is uniformly superior for this environment.     

A hybrid scheme for multicast authentication over lossy networks

For multicast communication, authentication is a challenging problem, since it requires that a large number of recipients must verify the data originator. Many of multicast applications are running over IP networks, in which several packet losses could occur. Therefore, multicast authentication protocols must resist packet loss. Other requirements of multicast authentication protocols are: to perform authentication in real-time and to have low communication and computation overheads. In the present paper, a hybrid scheme for authenticating real-time data applications, in which low delay at the sender is acceptable, is proposed. In order to provide authentication, the proposed scheme uses both public key signature and hash functions. It is based on the idea of dividing the stream into blocks of m packets. Then a chain of hashes is used to link each packet to the one preceding it. In order to resist packet loss, the hash of each packet is appended to another place in the stream. Finally, the first packet is signed. The proposed scheme resists packet loss and is joinable at any point. The proposed scheme is compared to other multicast authentication protocols. The comparison shows that the proposed scheme has the following advantages: first, it has low computation and communication overheads. Second, it has reasonable buffer requirements. Third, the proposed scheme has a low delay at the sender side and no delay at the receiver side, assuming no loss occurs. Finally, its latency equals to zero, assuming no loss occurs.     

Energy efficient multicast routing in ad hoc wireless networks

In this paper, we discuss the energy efficient multicast problem in ad hoc wireless networks. Each node in the network is assumed to have a fixed level of transmission power. The problem of our concern is: given an ad hoc wireless network and a multicast request, how to find a multicast tree such that the total energy cost of the multicast tree is minimized. We first prove this problem is NP-hard and it is unlikely to have an approximation algorithm with a constant performance ratio of the number of nodes in the network. We then propose an algorithm based on the directed Steiner tree method that has a theoretically guaranteed approximation performance ratio. We also propose two efficient heuristics, node-join-tree (NJT) and tree-join-tree (TJT) algorithms. The NJT algorithm can be easily implemented in a distributed fashion. Extensive simulations have been conducted to compare with other methods and the results have shown significant improvement on energy efficiency of the proposed algorithms.     

A taxonomy of multicast protocols for Internet applications

The continuous growth in applications that require communications among a group of hosts or simultaneous dissemination of data to multiple sites on the Internet has led to considerable interest in multicast communication. These applications have different quality of service requirements such as deadlines to response time and tolerance to data loss. Internet multicast protocols provide a spectrum of services to cater for the needs of a wide array of multicast applications. The design alternatives of a multicast protocol for a particular application may lead to different performance characteristics, for example higher utilization of network bandwidth vs lower protocol processing requirements. Therefore a framework is required to various design choices available to design multicast protocols and evaluate the performance tradeoffs associated with these alternatives. Motivated by such a need and by the evolution of multicast applications over the Internet, this article presents a taxonomy of multicast protocols and a common framework to evaluate their performance.     

Fundamental limits on end-to-end throughput of network coding in multi-rate and multicast wireless networks

This paper investigates the interaction between network coding and link-layer transmission rate diversity in multi-hop wireless networks. By appropriately mixing data packets at intermediate nodes, network coding allows a single multicast flow to achieve higher throughput to a set of receivers. Broadcast applications can also exploit link-layer rate diversity, whereby individual nodes can transmit at faster rates at the expense of corresponding smaller coverage area. We first demonstrate how combining rate-diversity with network coding can provide a larger capacity for data dissemination of a single multicast flow, and how consideration of rate diversity is critical for maximizing system throughput. Next we address the following question: given a specific topology of wireless nodes, what is the maximum rate that can be supported by the resultant network exploiting both network coding and multi-rate? We present a linear programming model to compute the maximal throughput that a multicast application can achieve with network coding in a rate-diverse wireless network. We also present analytical results where we observe noticeably better throughput than traditional routing. This suggests there is opportunity for achieving higher throughput by combining network coding and multi-rate diversity.     

A dynamic multicast tree based routing scheme without replication in delay tolerant networks

Delay tolerant networks (DTNs) are a special type of wireless mobile networks which may lack continuous network connectivity. Multicast is an important routing function that supports the distribution of data to a group of users: a service needed for many potential DTN applications. While multicasting in the Internet and in mobile ad hoc networks has been studied extensively, efficient multicasting in DTNs is a considerably different and challenging problem due to the probabilistic nature of contact among nodes. This paper aims to provide a non-replication multicasting scheme in DTNs while keeping the number of forwardings low. The address of each destination is not replicated, but is assigned to a particular node based on its contact rate level and active level. Our scheme is based on a dynamic multicast tree where each leaf node corresponds to a destination. Each tree branch is generated at a contact based on the compare–split rule proposed in this paper. The compare part determines when a new search branch is needed, and the split part decides how the destination set should be partitioned. When only one destination is left in the destination set, we use either wait (no further relay) or focus (with further relay) to reach the final destination. The effectiveness of our approach is verified through extensive simulations. Ratio-based-split performs best in the compare–split step, both in synthetic and real traces. Using the wait scheme can reduce the number of forwardings, while using the focus scheme can reduce the latency.     

GLBM: A new QoS aware multicast scheme for wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have been attracting significant attention due to their promising technology. The WMN technology is becoming a major avenue for the fourth generation of wireless mobility. Communication in large-scale wireless networks can create bottlenecks for scalable implementations of computationally intensive applications. A class of crucially important communication patterns that have already received considerable attention in this regard are group communication operations, since these inevitably place a high demand on network bandwidth and have a consequent impact on algorithm execution times. Multicast communication has been among the most primitive group capabilities of any message passing in networks. It is central to many important distributed applications in science and engineering and fundamental to the implementation of higher-level communication operations such as gossip, gather, and barrier synchronisation. Existing solutions offered for providing multicast communications in WMN have severe restriction in terms of almost all performance characteristics. Consequently, there is a need for the design and analysis of new efficient multicast communication schemes for this promising network technology. Hence, the aim of this study is to tackle the challenges posed by the continuously growing need for delivering efficient multicast communication over WMN. In particular, this study presents a new load balancing aware multicast algorithm with the aim of enhancing the QoS in the multicast communication over WMNs. Our simulations experiments show that our proposed multicast algorithm exhibits superior performance in terms of delay, jitter and throughput, compared to the most well known multicast algorithms.     

Discrete bandwidth allocation considering fairness and transmission load in multicast networks

As a promising solution to tackle the network heterogeneity in multicasting, layered multicast protocols such as receiver-driven layered multicast (RLM) and layered video multicast with retransmission (LVMR) have been proposed. This paper considers fairness as well as transmission load in the layered multicasting. Lexicographically fair bandwidth allocation among multicast receivers is considered under the constraint of minimum bandwidth requirement and the link capacity of the network. The problem of transmission load in the layer multicasting due to various user requirements is also examined by minimizing the number of layers.     

A multicast reprogramming protocol for wireless sensor networks based on small world concepts

Automatic reprogramming is an important and challenging issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A usual approach is the over-the-air programming (OAP), which is a fundamental service based on reliable broadcast for efficient code dissemination. However, existing OAP protocols do not enable the reprogramming of a subset of the sensor nodes in a WSN. Hence, in this work we propose a multicast-based over-the-air programming protocol that considers a small world infrastructure (MOAP-SW). The small world model is used to create shortcuts toward the sink in the communication infrastructure of sensor networks. The endpoints of these shortcuts are more powerful nodes, resulting in a heterogeneous wireless sensor network. Simulation results show the feasibility of the protocol regarding the number of messages transmitted, the energy consumption and the time to reconfigure the network.     

AMRST: adaptive multicast routing protocol for satellite–terrestrial networks

Multicasting facilitates the distributing of multimedia information to an entire set of destinations simultaneously. However, the subsequent mass of Internet traffic usually increases the network congestion and degrades network utilization. The unexpected congestion together with limited network capacity might challenge the provision of multimedia services especially since multicast subscribers are widely scattered. The desired QoS of the ongoing services cannot be guaranteed. To address this challenge, in addition to installing new terrestrial broadband networks, another feasible solution would be to integrate now available broadcasting-oriented broadband satellite networks into the Internet backbone. This paper presents a novel adaptive multicast routing (AMRST) protocol to deliver reliable and adaptive multicast services to global subscribers, based on an integrated infrastructure, called a satellite–terrestrial network (ST network), which provides dynamic bandwidth allocation, flexible resource management and ubiquitous transmission. In the AMRST, a proposed virtual hierarchical routing tree was applied in constructing an efficient multicast tree. A routing decision model was proposed to determine routing path for the member requests. A “hierarchical membership maintenance” approach was designed to maintain the multicast membership. The scalability of the AMRST was further addressed. The AMRST not only kept the benefits of the traditional terrestrial multicast but also promoted the multicasting performance by employing the satellite broadcasting capability. The simulation results demonstrate that the AMRST performed excellently for the ST network.     

Communication modeling of multicast in all-port wormhole-routed NoCs

Multicast is one of the most frequently used collective communication operations in multi-core SoC platforms. Bus as the traditional interconnect architecture for SoC development has been highly efficient in delivering multicast messages. Since the bus is non-scalable, it can not address the bandwidth requirements of the large SoCs. The networks on-chip (NoCs) emerged as a scalable alternative to address the increasing communication demands of such systems. However, due to its hop-to-hop communication, the NoCs may not be able to deliver multicast operations as efficiently as buses do. Adopting multi-port routers has been an approach to improve the performance of the multicast operations in interconnection networks. This paper presents a novel analytical model to compute communication latency of the multicast operation in wormhole-routed interconnection networks employing asynchronous multi-port routers scheme. The model is applied to the Quarc NoC and its validity is verified by comparing the model predictions against the results obtained from a discrete-event simulator developed using OMNET++.     

无线传感器网络中组播路由协议分析

无线传感器网络由小型无线通信传感设备密集部署形成。组播是一种将数据包从源节点有效传递到一组目的节点的基本路由服务技术。组播协议中,源节点到目的节点的一些路径可由多个目的节点共享,所共享的路径越大,总带宽消耗越低。在分析无线传感器网络基本特征的基础上,对无线传感器网络中现有的组播路由协议进行了分类分析和比较,最后对无线传感器网络组播路由协议的未来发展趋势提出展望。     

TMA: Trajectory-based Multi-Anycast forwarding for efficient multicast data delivery in vehicular networks

This paper describes Trajectory-based Multi-Anycast forwarding (TMA), tailored and optimized for the efficient multicast data delivery in vehicular networks in terms of transmission cost. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to investigate the efficient multicast data delivery in vehicle networks, based on the trajectories of vehicles in the multicast group. Due to the privacy concern, we assume only a central server knows the trajectory of each vehicle and the estimated current location of the vehicle. Therefore, after receiving a request of multicast data delivery from a source vehicle, the central server has to figure out how the data has to be delivered to the moving vehicles in the multicast group. For each target vehicle in the multicast group, multiple packet-and-vehicle rendezvous points are computed as a set of relay nodes to temporarily hold the data, considering the vehicle’s trajectory. This set of rendezvous points can be considered an Anycast set for the target vehicle. We have formulated the multicast data delivery as the data delivery to the anycast sets of the multicast group vehicles. Through theoretical analysis and extensive simulation, it is shown that our design provides an efficient multicast for moving vehicles under a variety of vehicular traffic conditions.     

Scheduling time-constrained multicast messages in circuit-switched tree networks

In this paper, we consider a kind of multicast scheduling problem in a tree network. Each multicast message is transmitted through a directed subtree within the tree network. The transmission time of each multicast message is assumed to be one unit. Two messages can be transmitted at the same time if their subtrees are edge-disjoint. Each message is constrained by a ready time and a deadline, and has a weight we can gain if it is scheduled within its deadline. The optimality criterion is the total weight we gain. We assume that the degree of each subtree is bounded by a constant d and present an approximation algorithm of which the approximation ratio is at most 4d+15.     

A system for the design of packet-switched communication networks with economic tradeoffs

This paper studies the problem of designing a packet-switched communication network with tradeoffs between link costs and response time to users. It consists of assigning capacities to links in the network and determining the routes used by messages for all communicating node pairs in order to minimize total link fixed and variable costs. A tradeoff between link costs and response time to users is achieved by including a constraint that sets an upper limit on the average link queueing delay in the network. The topology of the network and the end-to-end traffic requirements are given. The problem is formulated as a nonlinear integer programming model. Unlike most of previous models, where the best route for a communicating node pair is restricted to a set of prespecified candidate routes, our model considers all possible routes for every communicating node pair. An efficient heuristic based on a Lagrangean relaxation of the problem is developed to generate feasible solutions. The results of extensive computational experiments across a variety of previously used networks are reported. These results indicate that the solution procedure is effective for a wide range of traffic loads and cost structures.     

Performance analysis of multicast algorithms for mobile satellite communication networks

With the rise of mobile computing and an increasing need for ubiquitous high-speed data connections, Internet-in-the-sky solutions are becoming increasingly viable. To reduce the network overhead of one-to-many transmissions, the multicast protocol has been devised. The implementation of multicast in these low earth orbit (LEO) constellations is a critical component to achieving an omnipresent network environment. This paper examines the system performance associated with two terrestrial-based multicast mobility solutions, distance vector multicast routing protocol (DVMRP) with mobile IP and on demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP). These protocols are implemented and simulated in a satellite LEO constellation. Results from the simulation trials show the ODMRP protocol provided greater than 99% reliability in packet deliverability, at the cost of more than 8 bits of overhead for every 1 bit of data for multicast groups with multiple sources. In contrast, DVMRP proved robust and scalable, with data-to-overhead ratios increasing logarithmically with membership levels. DVMRP also had less than 70 ms of average end-to-end delay, providing stable transmissions at high loading and membership levels.     

An interference-aware fair scheduling for multicast in wireless mesh networks

Multicast is a fundamental routing service in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) due to its many potential applications such as video conferencing, online games, and webcast. Recently, researchers proposed using link-quality-based routing metrics for finding high-throughput paths for multicast routing. However, the performance of such link-quality-based multicast routing is still limited by severe unfairness. Two major artifacts that exist in WMNs are fading which leads to low quality links, and interference which leads to unfair channel allocation in the 802.11 MAC protocol. These artifacts cause the multicast application to behave unfairly with respect to the performance achieved by the multicast receivers.     

Vartalaap: A distributed multicast communication system

With the increasing proliferation of computer networks and distributed systems, there is a growing number of applications using multicast communication. This paper presents the Vartalaap system developed at IIT, Bombay. Vartalaap is an hierarchical distributed system for multicast communication over a network, implemented in a hardware-independent fashion. The multicast is achieved without resorting to unnecessary broadcasting of messages over the network. Issues covered in this paper include the primitives for multicast, the multicast model and the system architecture. We discuss the implementation of Vartalaap and compare it with some other systems. We conclude with a discussion on the limitations of the current implementation and directions for future work.     

TTPM – An efficient deadlock-free algorithm for multicast communication in 2D torus networks

A torus network has become increasingly important to multicomputer design because of its many features including scalability, low bandwidth and fixed degree of nodes. A multicast communication is a significant operation in multicomputer systems and can be used to support several other collective communication operations. This paper presents an efficient algorithm, TTPM, to find a deadlock-free multicast wormhole routing in two-dimensional torus parallel machines. The introduced algorithm is designed such that messages can be sent to any number of destinations within two start-up communication phases; hence the name Torus Two Phase Multicast (TTPM) algorithm. An efficient routing function is developed and used as a basis for the introduced algorithm. Also, TTPM allows some intermediate nodes that are not in the destination set to perform multicast functions. This feature allows flexibility in multicast path selection and therefore improves the performance. Performance results of a simulation study on torus networks are discussed to compare TTPM algorithm with a previous algorithm.