Efficient cross-layer protocol for bandwidth-satisfied multicast in multi-rate MANETs

Abstract

Since the multi-rate enhancements have been implemented in 802.11 wireless networks, QoS-constrained multicast protocols for multimedia communication should be adapted to exploit them fully. This work proposes a multicast protocol for data rate selection and bandwidth-satisfied multicast tree determination with an efficient cross-layer design based on the integration of PHY and MAC layers into the network layer. To use bandwidth efficiently and increase network capacity (which is the number of multicast flows supported by the network), we aim to select the combination of data rates and a multicast tree whose total amount of bandwidth consumption to the network is minimal in order to maximize the network capacity. The performance of the proposed protocol is compared with two existing protocols. Simulation results indicate that the proposed protocol has the ability to admit more multicast flows.