Interference-aware multicasting in Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

Multicasting is one of the most important applications in Wireless Ad hoc Networks and the currently emerging Wireless Mesh Networks. In such networks, interference due to the shared wireless medium is a prime factor in determining the data rate achievable by a multicast application. In this research work, we present an interferenceaware multicast routing algorithm that takes into account the effects of interference to determine the maximum bandwidth multicast structure. We characterize the problem of computing maximum bandwidth multicast structure as a graph problem of finding minimum degree weakly induced subgraph in a graph subject to the connectivity and interference constraints. We establish the intractability of the problem and provide efficient heuristic that performs close to the optimal in most of the cases. We also present the design of a more practical distributed algorithm. The simulation results demonstrate the benefits of our heuristic over Shortest Path Tree and Minimum Steiner Tree approximation algorithms. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2007.