High-throughput multicast routing metrics in wireless mesh networks

The stationary nature of nodes in a mesh network has shifted the main design goal of routing protocols from maintaining connectivity between source and destination nodes to finding high-throughput paths between them. Numerous link-quality-based routing metrics have been proposed for choosing high-throughput routing paths in recent years. In this paper, we study routing metrics for high-throughput tree or mesh construction in multicast protocols. We show that there is a fundamental difference between unicast and multicast routing in how data packets are transmitted at the link layer, and accordingly how the routing metrics for unicast routing should be adapted for high-throughput multicast routing. We propose a low-overhead adaptive online algorithm to incorporate link-quality metrics to a representative multicast routing protocol. We then study the performance improvement achieved by using different link-quality-based routing metrics via extensive simulation and experiments on a mesh-network testbed, using ODMRP as a representative multicast protocol.Our extensive simulation studies show that: (1) ODMRP equipped with any of the link-quality-based routing metrics can achieve higher throughput than the original ODMRP. In particular, under a tree topology, on average, ODMRP enhanced with link-quality routing metrics achieve up to 34% higher throughput than the original ODMRP under low multicast sending rate; (2) the improvement reduces to 21% under high multicast sending rate due to higher interference experienced by the data packets from the probe packets; (3) heavily penalizing lossy links is an effective way in the link-quality metric design to avoid low-throughput paths; and (4) the path redundancy from a mesh data dissemination topology in mesh-based multicast protocols provides another degree of robustness to link characteristics and reduces the additional throughput gain achieved by using link-quality-based routing metrics. Finally, our experiments on an eight-node testbed show that on average, ODMRP using SPP and PP achieves 14% and 17% higher throughput over ODMRP, respectively, validating the simulation results.     

OFDMA‐Based Reliable Multicast MAC Protocol for Wireless Ad‐Hoc Networks

Compared with unicast, multicast over wireless ad‐hoc networks do not support reliability due to their inability to exchange request‐to‐send/clear‐to‐send (RTS/CTS) and ACK packets with multiple recipients. Although several media access control (MAC) layer protocols have been proposed to provide reliable multicast, these introduce additional overhead, which degrades system performance. A novel MAC protocol for reliable wireless multicast is proposed in this paper. By adapting orthogonal frequency division multiple access characteristics in CTS and ACK packets, the protocol achieves reliability over wireless multicast with minimized overhead.     

Error control techniques for integrated services packet networks

The design of a multiservice packet network must ensure that delays to speech packets are minimized while data and other types of packets are delivered without error. The author suggests some ways in which error detection, forward error correction (FEC), and automatic repeat request (ARQ) schemes may be utilized in integrated services packet networks (ISPNs) to ensure that satisfactory error performance and reliability standards are achieved. The results show that ARQ schemes combined with reliable error detection are the most practical way of achieving reliable error control in integrated services networks. Also, such error control schemes can have performance advantages if applied on a region-by-region basis rather than simple end-to-end     

Protocol-independent multicast packet delivery improvement service for mobile Ad hoc networks

This paper addresses the issue of improving multicast packet delivery in mobile ad hoc networks and proposes an adaptive mechanism called Protocol-Independent Packet Delivery Improvement Service (PIDIS) to recover lost multicast packets. PIDIS provides its packet-delivery improvement services to any multicast routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks by exploiting the mechanism of swarm intelligence to make intelligent decisions about where to fetch the lost multicast packets from. PIDIS is a gossip protocol, and nodes using PIDIS are only concerned with which neighbor nodes to gossip with to recover the most lost packets, rather than which member nodes to gossip with. Thus, it does not rely on membership information in a multicast scenario, which is often difficult to get. PIDIS employs the beneficial aspects of probabilistic routing and adapts well to mobility. PIDIS achieves probabilistic improvement in multicast packet delivery and, unlike other gossip-based schemes, does not need to maintain information about group members from which lost multicast packets are retrieved. Further, the operations of PIDIS do not rely on any underlying routing protocol or primitive, and can be incorporated into any ad hoc multicast routing protocol. We incorporated PIDIS over ODMRP [On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol in Multihop Wireless Mobile Networks, Kluwer Mobile Networks and Applications, 2000], and compared it against Anonymous Gossip (AG) [International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2001) Phoenix, Arizona, April 2001] implemented over ODMRP, and ODMRP itself. Our simulation results show that ODMRP + PIDIS is more efficient and performs better than ODMRP + AG and ODMRP in terms of multicast packet delivery, end-to-end delay, and MAC layer overheads. We attribute the better performance and lower MAC overheads of ODMRP + PIDIS to the efficient gossiping made possible by using the swarm intelligence techniques.     

Wireless Ad Hoc Multicast Routing with Mobility Prediction

An ad hoc wireless network is an infrastructureless network composed of mobile hosts. The primary concerns in ad hoc networks are bandwidth limitations and unpredictable topology changes. Thus, efficient utilization of routing packets and immediate recovery of route breaks are critical in routing and multicasting protocols. A multicast scheme, On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP), has been recently proposed for mobile ad hoc networks. ODMRP is a reactive (on-demand) protocol that delivers packets to destination(s) on a mesh topology using scoped flooding of data. We can apply a number of enhancements to improve the performance of ODMRP. In this paper, we propose a mobility prediction scheme to help select stable routes and to perform rerouting in anticipation of topology changes. We also introduce techniques to improve transmission reliability and eliminate route acquisition latency. The impact of our improvements is evaluated via simulation.     

Parity-based loss recovery for reliable multicast transmission

We investigate how forward error correction (FEC) can be combined with automatic repeat request (ARQ) to achieve scalable reliable multicast transmission. We consider the two scenarios where FEC is introduced as a transparent layer underneath a reliable multicast layer that uses ARQ, and where FEC and ARQ are both integrated into a single layer that uses the retransmission of parity data to recover from the loss of original data packets. To evaluate the performance improvements due to FEC, we consider different loss rates and different types of loss behavior (spatially or temporally correlated loss, homogeneous or heterogeneous loss) for up to 10⁶ receivers. Our results show that introducing FEC as a transparent layer below ARQ can improve multicast transmission efficiency and scalability. However, there are substantial additional improvements when FEC and ARQ are integrated     

High-performance architectures for IP-based multihop 802.11 networks

The concept of a forwarding node, which receives packets from upstream nodes and then transmits these packets to downstream nodes, is a key element of any multihop network, wired or wireless. While high-speed IP router architectures have been extensively studied for wired networks, the concept of a "wireless IP router" has not been addressed so far. We examine the limitations of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol in supporting a low-latency and high-throughput IP datapath comprising multiple wireless LAN hops. We first propose a wireless IP forwarding architecture that uses MPLS with modifications to 802.11 MAC to significantly improve packet forwarding efficiency. We then study further enhancements to 802.11 MAC that improve system throughput by allowing a larger number of concurrent packet transmissions in multihop 802.11-based IP networks. With 802.11 poised to be the dominant technology for wireless LANs, we believe a combined approach to MAC, packet forwarding, and transport layer protocols is needed to make high-performance multihop 802.11 networks practically viable.     

Distributed network embedded FEC for real-time multicast applications in multi-hop wireless networks

Multi-hop wireless networks are becoming popular because of their flexibility and low deployment cost. Emerging technologies such as orthogonal frequency division and multiple in and multiple out have significantly increased the bandwidth of a wireless channel. Further, as device cost decreases, a communication terminal can have multiple radios and transmit/receive data simultaneously, which improves the capacity of a wireless network. This makes the support of real-time multicast applications over multi-hop wireless networks viable and practical. Meanwhile, wireless links are prone to random and burst losses due to multipath fading and cross channel interference, real-time multicast over a wireless network remains a challenging problem. Traditional end-to-end FEC is less efficient in multi-hop wireless networks, as packets may suffer from random or burst losses in more than one hop before they arrive at their destination. In this paper, we advocate the deployment of distributed network-embedded FEC (DNEF) for real-time multicast distribution over multi-hop wireless networks. We first develop a packet loss model of multi-hop wireless networks using a system analysis approach. We then propose a distributed codec placement algorithm and evaluate its performance. Our simulation shows that multicast using DNEF significantly outperforms both traditional multicast and application-level peer-to-peer multicast that can be deployed over multi-hop wireless networks.     

On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol in Multihop Wireless Mobile Networks

An ad hoc network is a dynamically reconfigurable wireless network with no fixed infrastructure or central administration. Each host is mobile and must act as a router. Routing and multicasting protocols in ad hoc networks are faced with the challenge of delivering data to destinations through multihop routes in the presence of node movements and topology changes. This paper presents the On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP) for wireless mobile ad hoc networks. ODMRP is a mesh-based, rather than a conventional tree-based, multicast scheme and uses a forwarding group concept; only a subset of nodes forwards the multicast packets via scoped flooding. It applies on-demand procedures to dynamically build routes and maintain multicast group membership. ODMRP is well suited for ad hoc wireless networks with mobile hosts where bandwidth is limited, topology changes frequently, and power is constrained. We evaluate ODMRP performance with other multicast protocols proposed for ad hoc networks via extensive and detailed simulation.     

Modeling TCP SACK performance over wireless channels with semi-reliable ARQ/FEC

Providing reliable data communications over wireless channels is a challenging task because time-varying wireless channel characteristics often lead to bit errors. These errors result in loss of IP packets and, consequently, TCP segments encapsulated into these packets. Since TCP cannot distinguish packet losses due to bit corruption from those due to network congestion, any packet loss caused by wireless channel impairments leads to unnecessary execution of the TCP congestion control algorithms and, hence, sub-optimal performance. Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) and Forward Error Correction (FEC) try to improve communication reliability and reduce packet losses by detecting and recovering corrupted bits. Most analytical models that studied the effect of ARQ and FEC on TCP performance assumed that the ARQ scheme is perfectly persistent (i.e., completely reliable), thus a frame is always successfully transmitted irrespective of the number of transmission attempts it takes. In this paper, we develop an analytical cross-layer model for a TCP connection running over a wireless channel with a semi-reliable ARQ scheme, where the amount of transmission attempts is limited by some number. The model allows to evaluate the joint effect of stochastic properties of the wireless channel characteristics and various implementation-specific parameters on TCP performance, which makes it suitable for performance optimization studies. The input parameters include the bit error rate, the value of the normalized autocorrelation function of bit error observations at lag 1, the strength of the FEC code, the persistency of ARQ, the size of protocol data units at different layers, the raw data rate of the wireless channel, and the bottleneck link buffer size.     

PEEC: a channel-adaptive feedback-based error

Reliable transmission is a challenging task over wireless LANs since wireless links are known to be susceptible to errors. Although the current IEEE802.11 standard ARQ error control protocol performs relatively well over channels with very low bit error rates (BERs), this performance deteriorates rapidly as the BER increases. This paper investigates the problem of reliable transmission in a contention free wireless LAN and introduces a packet embedded error control (PEEC) protocol, which employs packet-embedded parity symbols instead of ARQ-based retransmission for error recovery. Specifically, depending on receiver feedback, PEEC adaptively estimates channel conditions and administers the transmission of (data and parity) symbols within a packet. This enables successful recovery of both new data and old unrecovered data from prior transmissions. In addition to theoretically analyzing PEEC, the performance of the proposed scheme is extensively analyzed over real channel traces collected on 802.11b WLANs. We compare PEEC performance with the performance of the IEEE802.il standard ARQ protocol as well as contemporary protocols such as enhanced ARQ and the hybrid ARQ/FEC. Our analysis and experimental simulations show that PEEC outperforms all three competing protocols over a wide range of actual 802.11b WLAN collected traces. Finally, the design and implementation of PEEC using an adaptive low-density-parity-check (A-LDPC) decoder is presented.     

MR2_ODMRP: Improvement of End-to-End Transmission Delay in Wireless Multicast Routing

With recent advances in wireless technology, the importance of the capability to use multiple transmission rates and multiple radios has been widely recognized. In this paper, multi-rate and multi-radio (MR2) characteristics are exploited to improve end-to-end transmission delay for reliable multicasts. To achieve this goal, maximum potential rate based on multiple rates and radio based transmission delay with a different number of available radios are investigated in the construction of multicast routes. Multi-rate multi-radio on-demand multicast routing protocol (MR2_ODMRP), a protocol that makes ODMRP suitable for a MR2 environment, is proposed. An integer linear programming model is proposed to obtain the optimal tree as well as the rate and radios at each node of the tree for each multicast service. The solution is employed to evaluate the performance of the MR2_ODMRP. From the simulation, it is shown that the MR2_ODMRP produces nearly optimal solutions even in environments with a large number of nodes. It outperforms the ODMRP in wireless mesh networks. The end-to-end transmission delay is improved by a factor of four compared to the ODMRP.     

Erasure coding for reliable adaptive retransmission in wireless broadcast/multicast systems

In this paper, we present new adaptive automatic repeat request (ARQ) schemes for wireless broadcast/multicast combining erasure coding (EC) and packet retransmission. Traditional approaches rely on retransmitting the lost packets in a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint mode. The main idea behind the presented protocols is to retransmit adaptive combinations of the lost packets using EC, which can help several receivers to recover the lost information with fewer retransmission attempts. We propose two versions of EC-based ARQ protocols, and investigate theoretically the corresponding transmission bandwidths in different contexts. We show through simulation results the efficiency of the proposed protocols with respect to conventional ARQ strategies and new published ARQ works for broadcast/multicast. Finally, a new sliding window NACK feedback policy is presented for the case of a high number of receivers to avoid the feedback implosion problem.     

Reliable Multicast in Multi-Access Wireless LANs

Multicast is an efficient paradigm for transmitting data from a sender to a group of receivers. In this paper, we focus on multicast in single channel multi-access wireless local area networks (LANs) comprising several small cells. In such a system, a receiver cannot correctly receive a packet if two or more packets are sent to it at the same time, because the packets collide. Therefore, one has to ensure that only one node sends at a time. We look at two important issues. First, we consider the problem of the sender acquiring the multi-access channel for multicast transmission. Second, for reliable multicast in each cell of the wireless LAN, we examine ARQ-based approaches. The second issue is important because the wireless link error rates can be very high.We present a new approach to overcome the problem of feedback collision in single channel multi-access wireless LANs, both for the purpose of acquiring the channel and for reliability. Our approach involves the election of one of the multicast group members (receivers) as a leader or representative for the purpose of sending feedback to the sender. For reliable multicast, on erroneous reception of a packet, the leader does not send an acknowledgment, prompting a retransmission. On erroneous reception of the packet at receivers other than the leader, our protocol allows negative acknowledgments from these receivers to collide with the acknowledgment from the leader, thus destroying the acknowledgment and prompting the sender to retransmit the packet.Using analytical models, we demonstrate that the leader-based protocol exhibits higher throughput in comparison to two other protocols which use traditional delayed feedback-based probabilistic methods. Last, we present a simple scheme for leader election.     

Optimal design of hybrid FEC/ARQ schemes for TCP over wireless links with Rayleigh fading

In this paper, we investigate interactions between TCP and wireless hybrid FEC/ARQ schemes. The aim is to understand what is the best configuration of the wireless link protocol in order to guarantee TCP performance and channel efficiency. Interactions between TCP and different link layer mechanisms are evaluated by means of an analytic model that reproduces: 1) a Rayleigh fading channel with FEC coding, 2) a generic selective repeat ARQ Protocol, and 3) the TCP behavior in a wired-cum-wireless network scenario. The analytic model is validated-by means of ns-based simulations. The analysis represents a contribution to the optimal design of link layer parameters of wireless networks crossed by TCP/IP traffic. The main findings can be summarized as follows: 1) fully reliable ARQ protocols are the best choice for both TCP performance and wireless link efficiency and 2) optimal values of FEC redundancy degree from the point of view of energy efficiency maximizes TCP performance as well.     

An efficient mesh‐based multicast routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks

Mesh‐based multicast routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) build multiple paths from senders to receivers to deliver packets even in the presence of links breaking. This redundancy results in high reliability/robustness but may significantly increase packet overhead. This paper proposes a mesh‐based multicast protocol, called centered protocol for unified multicasting through announcements (CPUMA), that achieves comparable reliability as existing mesh‐based multicast protocols, however, with significantly much less data overhead. In CPUMA, a distributed core‐selection and maintenance algorithm is used to find the source‐centric center of a shared mesh. We leverage data packets to center the core of each multicast group shared mesh instead of using GPS or any pre‐assignment of cores to groups (the case of existing protocols). The proposed centering scheme allows reducing data packet overhead and creating forwarding paths toward the nearest mesh member instead of the core to reduce latency. We show, via simulations, that CPUMA outperforms existing multicast protocols in terms of data packet overhead, and latency while maintaining a constant or better packet delivery ratio, at the cost of a small increase in control overhead in a few scenarios. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ring Mesh Based Multicast Routing Scheme in MANET Using Bandwidth Delay Product

Quality of Service (QoS) support in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) for group communication necessitates design of reliable networks with multicast support mechanisms. Reliable network connectivity among MANET nodes require high quality links that have much less packet drops and reliable nodes considering node mobility and failures. Reliability of a network can be enhanced by designing an end-to-end network pipe that satisfies the required QoS in terms of in-flight packets from source to a destination as well as by using a path comprising of reliable nodes. In-flight packets may be computed by using bandwidth delay product (BDP) of a network pipe. To meet the QoS requirements of an application, BDP should be maintained stable irrespective of vibrant network conditions. In this paper, we propose a BDP based multicast routing scheme in MANET using reliable ring mesh backbone. The scheme operates in the following sequence. (1) Reliable node pairs are computed based on mobility, remaining battery power and differential signal strength. The node pairs also compute BDP between them. BDP of a reliability pair is assessed using available bandwidth and delay experienced by a packet between them. (2) Backbone ring mesh is constructed using reliable pair nodes and convex hull algorithm. Reliable ring mesh is constructed at an arbitrary distance from the centroid of the MANET area. (3) Multicast paths are found by discovering a path from source to each destination of the group with concatenated set of reliability pairs that satisfy the BDP requirement. (4) The ring mesh maintains high BDP on ring links and can recover in case of node mobility and failures. Results show that there is an improvement in terms of end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, control overhead, memory overhead and application rejection ratio as compared to the Enhanced On Demand Multicast Routing Protocol.     

Scalable QoS-based IP multicast over label-switching wireless ATMnetworks

A Mobile IP multicast prototype that integrates a label-switching wireless asynchronous transfer mode, the mobile core-based multicast architecture, and an Internet multicast infrastructure is presented. MCOM creates multiple core-based layer 2 multicast trees that are independently established in member networks. They are interconnected via the Internet using layer 3 multicast routing. Gateways on the border of the Internet and wireless ATM networks convert ATM multicast traffic to suitable IP packets as well as converting from IP packets to ATM cells for MCOM. To solve the cell interleaving problem that results, ATM block transfer/immediate transmission capability is reasonably modified. Additionally, class-based block buffer management for ATM multicast connections is built into wireless ATM switches for soft quality of service control. Dynamic group management, multicast channel rerouting, and reliable multicasting are also studied in relation to existing Internet protocols like Mobile IP, Internet group management protocols, and multicast routing protocols     

A ring-based multicast routing topology with QoS support in wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networking (WMN) is an emerging technology for future broadband wireless access. The proliferation of the mobile computing devices that are equipped with cameras and ad hoc communication mode creates the possibility of exchanging real-time data between mobile users in wireless mesh networks. In this paper, we argue for a ring-based multicast routing topology with support from infrastructure nodes for group communications in WMNs. We study the performance of multicast communication over a ring routing topology when 802.11 with RTS/CTS scheme is used at the MAC layer to enable reliable multicast services in WMNs. We propose an algorithm to enhance the IP multicast routing on the ring topology. We show that when mesh routers on a ring topology support group communications by employing our proposed algorithms, a significant performance enhancement is realized. We analytically compute the end-to-end delay on a ring multicast routing topology. Our results show that the end-to-end delay is reduced about 33 %, and the capacity of multicast network (i.e., maximum group size that the ring can serve with QoS guarantees) is increased about 50 % as compared to conventional schemes. We also use our analytical results to develop heuristic algorithms for constructing an efficient ring-based multicast routing topology with QoS guarantees. The proposed algorithms take into account all possible traffic interference when constructing the multicast ring topology. Thus, the constructed ring topology provides QoS guarantees for the multicast traffic and minimizes the cost of group communications in WMNs.