Multicast Group Members Research Articles

Efficient Optimization approach in WSN using Multicast Forwarding Scheme in 6LowPAN Environment

The rapidly growing network of devices that are connected known as the Internet of Things, also referred to as IoT, is designed to collect and exchange data. These devices are integrated with sensors, software, and other technologies. An IPv6-based routing system called 6LowPAN was created especially for Internet of Things devices with little resources. However, because multicast packets must be replicated to every multicast group member, the conventional multicast forwarding technique in 6LowPAN may be wasteful. This can result in excessive energy usage and network traffic, particularly in large-scale Internet of Things implementations. An optimization process is presented here using a multicast forwarding scheme. In the proposed forwarding scheme, nodes can send multicast packets up and down at Low Power and Lossy networks over the 6LowPAN environment. Should the sink node be on the root node, it should immediately request that other nodes join the multicast messaging network of things. If otherwise, an ICMPv6 packet will be sent towards the root node in the Destination-oriented Directed-Acyclic Graphs (DODAG) tree, which expands the multicast messages in the first source's interest. In multi-bounce forward straight-line topology, when the DODAG network root is the source of multicast congestion, it exhibits a similar ratio of packet delivery and delay from end to end with a minimal memory overhead. When traffic via multicast originates from the most important rank node in a backward straight-line topology, this paper focuses on the efficiency of the multicast network at 6LowPAN.

GOR: Group-oblivious multicast routing in airborne tactical networks under uncertainty

Disseminating mission assignment messages always requires effective and flexible multicast routing scheme design in airborne tactical networks, in particular, when the multicast group members are under uncertainty. Traditional IP multicast routing strategies have little regard for the uncertainty of multicasting in airborne tactical networks, wherein the multicast groups are highly unpredictable and are changing over different sessions. In this work, we present a group-oblivious multicast routing strategy, termed as GOR, to hedge against the uncertainty of multicasting in airborne tactical networks. GOR exploits Bit Index Explicit Replication (BIER) technique for the sake of stateless multicast. In order to minimize multicast delay, GOR re-formulates the hierarchical deployment of BIER into a modified group Steiner tree problem for a better routing. Both analytical and experimental results demonstrate that the presented GOR can provide reasonably better multicast performance across all possible sets of group members.

Efficient Management of Multicast Traffic in Directional mmWave Networks

Multicasting is becoming more and more important in the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable applications (e.g., high definition video streaming, virtual reality gaming, public safety, among others) that require high bandwidth efficiency and low energy consumption. In this regard, millimeter wave (mmWave) communications can play a crucial role to efficiently disseminate large volumes of data as well as to enhance the throughput gain in fifth-generation (5G) and beyond networks. There are, however, challenges to face in view of providing multicast services with high data rates under the conditions of short propagation range caused by high path loss at mmWave frequencies. Indeed, the strong directionality required at extremely high frequency bands excludes the possibility of serving all multicast users via a single transmission. Therefore, multicasting in directional systems consists of a sequence of beamformed transmissions to serve all multicast group members, subgroup by subgroup. This paper focuses on multicast data transmission optimization in terms of throughput and, hence, of the energy efficiency of resource-constrained devices such as wearables, running their resource-hungry applications. In particular, we provide a means to perform the beam switching and propose a radio resource management (RRM) policy that can determine the number and width of the beams required to deliver the multicast content to all interested users. Achieved simulation results show that the proposed RRM policy significantly improves network throughput with respect to benchmark approaches. It also achieves a high gain in energy efficiency over unicast and multicast with fixed predefined beams.

Clustered Multicast Source Routing for Large-Scale Cloud Data Centers

The multi-tenancy concept in cloud data center (DC) networks paves the way towards advancements and innovation in the underlying infrastructure such as network virtualization. Multicast routing is essential in leveraging multi-tenancy to its full potential. However, traditional IP multicast routing is not suitable for DC networks due to the need to support a massive amount of multicast groups and hosts. State-of-the-art DC multicast routing approaches aim to overcome these scalability issues by, for instance, taking advantage of the symmetry of DC topologies and the programmability of DC switches to compactly encode multicast group information inside packets, thereby reducing the overhead resulting from the need to store the states of flows at the network switches. Although these approaches scale well with the number of multicast groups, they do not perform well with group sizes and, as a result, yield substantial traffic control overhead and network congestion. In this article, we present Bert, a scalable source-initiated DC multicast routing approach that scales well with both the number and size of multicast groups through the clustering of multicast group members where each cluster employs its own forwarding rules. Compared to the state-of-the-art approach, Bert yields much less traffic control overhead by significantly reducing packet header sizes and eliminating switch memory usage across the switches.

NDN-MMRA: Multi-Stage Multicast Rate Adaptation in Named Data Networking WLAN

Named Data Networking (NDN) is considered as a prominent architecture towards future Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN), and multicast plays an important role in data delivery such as media streaming, multipoint videoconferencing, etc. However, to achieve high-efficiency multicast in NDN WLAN is challenging for two significant reasons. First, without feedback mechanism in IEEE 802.11 standards, to guarantee reliability, the current multicast scheme transmits the multicast data with the basic rate (e.g., 1 Mbps for IEEE 802.11b), which inevitably increases the transmission delay for high-speed consumers. Second, as a NDN multicast group is constituted by consumers who are requesting the same content, multicast groups are easy to form and evolve rapidly, where a data rate adaptation scheme is requisite to accommodate differential multicast groups. In this paper, we propose a multi-stage multicast rate adaptation scheme for NDN WLAN, named NDN-MMRA , to minimize the total transmission time with reliability guarantee for multicast group members. In NDN-MMRA , by checking the Pending Interest Table (PIT) status information, the number of consumers in each multicast group as well as their receiving capabilities are known ahead; with the available data rates in a specific 802.11 standard, NDN-MMRA determines: 1) how many transmission stages are required; and 2) in each stage, which data rate should be adopted. The merit is that with multi-stage transmissions, the data rate can be adapted in descending order to accommodate high-speed consumers with delay minimized, and low-speed consumers with reliability guaranteed. We implement NDN-MMRA in NS-3 by adopting the ndnSIM module, and conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate its efficacy under different IEEE 802.11 standards and various underlying WLAN topologies.

Multicast Optimization for CLOS Fabric in Media Data Centers

Multicast is widely deployed in data centers for point-to-multi-point communications. Multicast is increasingly being used to carry uncompressed video in media data centers with very large bandwidth requirements per flow. Multicast control protocols such as IGMP and PIM build multicast trees without trying to maximize the overall fabric capacity, leading to decreased fabric utilization and inability to service flows. In addition, existing multicast protocols are not bandwidth-aware and could cause links to over-subscribe leading to packet loss and negative user quality of experience. In this paper, we formulate offline optimization for multicast trees in clos fabric. We then design and implement two novel algorithms, iRP and LiRP, to optimize multicast tree formation and increase overall fabric multicast capacity. iRP algorithm optimizes online formation of multicast trees while addressing bandwidth requirements using SDN controller. We share analysis of TV studio repetitive traffic patterns the benefits of time series forecasting to predict multicast group membership and bring online optimization efficiency closer to offline optimization results. We then implement and test LiRP algorithm to increases iRP's fabric efficiency by implementing k-fold cross validation method to predict future multicast group memberships leading to optimized multicast tree placement. We implement iRP and LiRP algorithms using controller-based system and test both algorithms using Cisco Nexus commercially available switches. Testing results confirm that iRP Algorithm increases fabric capacity by 60% compared to PIM performance. LiRP system increases the efficiency of iRP by up to 40% through prediction of multicast group memberships with online arrival.

Improving Energy Efficiency of Multimedia Content Dissemination by Adaptive Clustering and D2D Multicast

While achieving desired performance, there exist still many challenges in current cellular networks to support the multimedia content dissemination services. The conventional multimedia transmission schemes tend to serve all multicast group members with the data rate supported by the receiving user with the worst channel condition. The recent work discusses how to provide satisfactory quality of service (QoS) for all receiving users with different quality of experience (QoE) requirements, but the energy efficiency improvement of multimedia content dissemination is not its focus. In this paper, we address it based on adaptive clustering and device-to-device (D2D) multicast and propose an energy-efficient multimedia content dissemination scheme under a consistent QoE constraint. Our scheme extends the recent work with the proposed K-means-based D2D clustering method and the proposed game-based incentive mechanism, which can improve energy efficiency of multimedia content dissemination on the premise of ensuring the desired QoE for most multicast group members. In the proposed scheme, we jointly consider the cellular multicast, intracluster D2D multicast, and intercluster D2D multicast for designing the energy-efficient multimedia content dissemination scheme. In particular, we formulate the energy-efficient multicast transmission problem as a Stackelberg game model, where the macro base station (MBS) is the leader and the candidate D2D cluster heads (DCHs) are the followers. Also, the MBS acts as the buyer who buys the power from the candidate DCHs for intracluster and intercluster D2D multicast communications, and the candidate DCHs act as the sellers who earn reward by helping the MBS with D2D multicast communications. Through analyzing the above game model, we derive the Stackelberg equilibrium as the optimal allocation for cellular multicast power, intracluster D2D multicast power, and intercluster D2D multicast power, which can maximize the MBS’s utility function. Finally, the proposed scheme is verified through the simulation experiments designed in this paper.

A Multicast Scheme Based on Fidelity Metrics in Quantum Networks

A multicast scheme based on fidelity metrics in quantum networks is proposed in this paper. First of all, according to the fidelity of copies in an asymmetric mechanism of $1\rightarrow 1+ 1+ 1+1$ which is derived, the way of information transmission in the quantum networks is defined: one is one-to-one transmission based on the teleportation and the other is one-to-many lossy transmission based on quantum cloning mechanism. Second, in a specified quantum network which is a connected graph, a source node can randomly assign multicast group members. Then, with constraints of the number of replicas and the maximum number of hops of the shortest path, an optimal multicast tree is constructed to obtain maximum fidelity. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed scheme can select the optimal path from the source node to the multicast members for the specified quantum network. With the increase of multicast group members, the average value of information fidelity obtained by all members decreases. Compared with the multicast tree constructed by the KMB algorithm, which is used to construct the Steiner tree in classical communication, the proposed schemes make the information fidelity obtained by multicast group members improve significantly.

Uncertain multicast under dynamic behaviors

Multicast transfer can efficiently save the bandwidth consumption and reduce the load on the source node than a series of independent unicast transfers. Nowadays, many applications employ the content replica strategy to improve the robustness and efficiency; hence each file and its replicas are usually distributed among multiple sources. In such scenarios, the traditional deterministic multicast develops into the Uncertain multicast, which has more flexibility in the source selection. In this paper, we focus on building and maintaining a minimal cost forest (MCF) for any uncertain multicast, whose group members (source nodes and destination nodes) may join or leave after constructing a MCF. We formulate this dynamic minimal cost forest (DMCF) problem as a mixed integer programming model. We then design three dedicated methods to approximate the optimal solution. Among them, our a-MCF aims to efficiently construct an MCF for any given uncertain multicast, without dynamic behaviors of multicast group members. The d-MCF method motivates to slightly update the existing MCF via local modifications once appearing a dynamic behavior. It can achieve the balance between the minimal cost and the minimal modifications to the existing forest. The last r-MCF is a supplement method to the d-MCF method, since many rounds of local modifications may make the resultant forest far away from the optimal forest. Accordingly, our r-MCF method monitors the accumulated degradation and triggers the rearrangement process to reconstruct an new MCF when necessary. The comprehensive evaluation results demonstrate that our methods can well tackle the proposed DMCF problem.

Scalable Multicast in Highly-Directional 60-GHz WLANs

The 60-GHz bands target multi-gigabit rate applications, such as high definition video streaming. Unfortunately, to provide multicast service, the strong directionality required at 60 GHz precludes serving all clients in a multicast group with a single transmission. Instead, a multicast transmission is comprised of a sequence of beam-formed transmissions (a beam group) that together cover all multicast group members. In this paper, we design, implement, and experimentally evaluate scalable directional multicast (SDM) as a technique to 1) train the access point with per-beam per-client RSSI measurements via partially traversing a codebook tree. The training balances the objectives of limiting overhead with collecting sufficient data to form efficient beam groups. 2) Using the available training information, we design a scalable beam grouping algorithm that approximates the minimum multicast group data transmission time. We implement the key components of SDM and evaluate with a combination of over-the-air experiments and trace-driven simulations. Our results show that the gains provided by SDM increase with group size and provide near-optimal group selection with significantly reduced training time, yielding up to 1.8 times throughput gains over exhaustive-search training and grouping.

Delay model of multicast protocols co‐existing with legacy unicast in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network

Reliable and QoS-aware multimedia delivery is one of the most important requirements to satisfy end user needs. IEEE 802.11 networks have become one of the most popular Internet access methods owing to their low-cost and fast connection speed. Multicasting is a transmission technique that can significantly increase network efficiency through the simultaneous delivery of the same multimedia content to multiple multicast group members. IEEE 802.11 describes several multicast protocols targeted to increase the robustness of audio and video delivery. Some researchers have investigated the performance of such multicast protocols in terms of their achievable throughput. However, for a better understanding of the suitability of the protocols for a QoS-aware multimedia transmission, an in-depth analysis of the achievable delay is needed. This study provides a detailed delay analysis and describes analytical models for estimating the average achievable delay of IEEE 802.11 multicast protocols co-existing with legacy stations. The proposed analytical models are compared against simulation results under various conditions and parameter configurations. The simulation results validate the accuracy of the proposed models.

Control plane innovations to realize dynamic formulation of multicast sessions in inter-DC software-defined elastic optical networks

It is known that to support the applications such as datacenter backup and migration, multicast should be supported efficiently in inter-datacenter (inter-DC) networks to carry the corresponding point-to-multiple-point communications. Moreover, due to the traffic dynamics in inter-DC networks, we might have to consider the case that the multicast members can join or leave a multicast session dynamically. Therefore, in this work, we try to leverage control plane innovations to realize dynamic formulation of multicast sessions in inter-DC software-defined elastic optical networks (SD-EONs), which are equipped with multicast-incapable bandwidth-variable wavelength selective switches (MI-BV-WSS'). Here, one key issue to address is that the continuous changing of multicast group members can degrade the optimality of a multicast-tree. Hence, we propose to rearrange the multicast-trees adaptively to reduce their spectrum usage. Meanwhile, we try to minimize the frequency of rearrangements to avoid unnecessary operation complexity. Based on these considerations, we propose several multicast-tree rearrangement algorithms for updating multicast sessions dynamically with lightpath reroutings in inter-DC SD-EONs. Both partial and full multicast-tree rearrangements are studied. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithms can rearrange the multicast-trees intelligently such that the blocking probability can be reduced effectively with the least lightpath reroutings. Next, based on these theoretical investigations, we consider how to implement the proposed algorithms in the control plane of an inter-DC SD-EON. We extend the OpenFlow (OF) protocol to support the dynamic formulation of multicast sessions and also design the functional models in the control plane elements to realize multicast-tree rearrangements. Experiment results verify the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms and system design.

Asymmetric Directional Multicast for Capillary Machine-to-Machine Using mmWave Communications.

The huge demand for high data rate machine-to-machine (M2M) services has led to the use of millimeter Wave (mmWave) band communications with support for a multi-Gbps data rate through the use of directional antennas. However, unnecessary sector switching in multicast transmissions with directional antennas results in a long delay, and consequently a low throughput. We propose asymmetric directional multicast (ADM) for capillary M2M to address this problem in mmWave communications. ADM provides asymmetric sectorization that is optimized for the irregular deployment pattern of mulicast group members. In ADM, an M2M gateway builds up asymmetric sectors with a beamwidth of a different size to cover all multicast group members with the minimum number of directional transmissions. The performance of ADM under various simulation environments is evaluated through a comparison with legacy mmWave multicast. The results of the simulation indicate that ADM achieves a better performance in terms of the transmission sectors, the transmission time, and the aggregate throughput when compared with the legacy multicast method.

Single Frequency-Based Device-to-Device-Enhanced Video Delivery for Evolved Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services

Despite of the undisputed benefits of the long term evolution-advanced (LTE-A) networks, offering support for group-oriented services challenges the evolved multimedia broadcast multicast services (eMBMS) design in LTE-A. This is especially important when delivering video content with high bitrate requirements. The conventional multicast scheme (CMS) is proposed as a radio resource allocation solution for eMBMS to serve all multicast group members with the data rate supported by the receiver with the worst channel conditions. In this paper, we propose a novel radio resource management approach, the device-to-device (D2D)-enhanced CMS with single frequency (D2D-SF). This proposal extends the CMS with additional D2D communications in order to increase the aggregate data rate of the cell, while also maintaining the typical CMS short-term fairness. D2D-SF makes use of one or more mobile subscriber devices as forwarding devices (FD) to retransmit the data received from the base station (BS) over direct local links to other members of the multicast group. The proposed solution supports both high-rate modulation and coding schemes on the downlink from BS to FDs, and reaches cell-edge devices (hence, experiencing worse channel conditions) through high-performing D2D links (improving this experience). Testing shows how the single frequency-based D2D CMS paradigm proposed, complemented by two novel strategies for selecting FDs, achieves significant enhancements of the overall performance when delivering video content compared to both the state-of-the-art multicast solutions and novel solutions that do not employ a single-frequency paradigm.

Lightweight Multicast Routing Based on Stable Core for MANETs

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have recently gained increased interest due to the widespread use of smart mobile devices. Group communication applications, serving for better cooperation between subsets of business members, become more significant in the context of MANETs. Multicast routing mechanisms are very useful communication techniques for such group-oriented applications. This paper deals with multicast routing problems in terms of stability and scalability, using the concept of stable core. We propose LMRSC (Lightweight Multicast Routing Based on Stable Core), a lightweight multicast routing technique for MANETs, in order to avoid periodic flooding of the source messages throughout the network, and to increase the duration of multicast routes. LMRSC establishes and maintains mesh architecture for each multicast group member by dividing the network into several zones, where each zone elects the most stable node as its core. Node residual energy and node velocity are used to calculate the node stability factor. The proposed algorithm is simulated by using NS-2 simulation, and is compared with other multicast routing mechanisms: ODMRP and PUMA. Packet delivery ratio, multicast route lifetime, and control packet overhead are used as performance metrics. These metrics are measured by gradual increase of the node mobility, the number of sources, the group size and the number of groups. The simulation performance results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other mechanisms in terms of routes stability and network density.

A new leader-based multicast scheme with a Raptor code in IEEE 802.11 multi-rate WLANs

Abstract Multimedia streaming using a multicast scheme over IEEE 802.11 multi-rate wireless local area networks (WLANs) faces many challenges owing to the heterogeneous channel conditions of receivers. Although many multicast schemes have been proposed to support multimedia streaming over multi-rate WLANs, those schemes do not deal with multicast transmission efficiently. In this paper, a new leader-based multicast scheme with a Raptor code is proposed. The proposed scheme consists of a leader selection block, a scalable video coding (SVC) block with unequal error protection (UEP), and a link adaptation block with a Raptor code. In the proposed scheme, one of the multicast group members is selected as a multicast group leader according to a leader cost, and then link adaptation operates between the multicast transmitter and the multicast group leader. In addition, SVC, UEP, and Raptor code mechanisms are applied to guarantee the minimum required performance of multicast group members. The proposed scheme aims to enhance the link utilization and guarantees the minimum quality-of-service requirement of multicast group members. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme performs better than previous multicast schemes.

An IPv6 Security Multicast System Based on CA Authentication

To deploy network components of a security multicast which is based on the multicast group security architecture and its key management architecture, an IPv6 security multicast system using CA authentication is designed. The multicast group members use CA certificate to access network, while the role of Group Controller/key Server deployed in the network is to establish and manage the group key and negotiate SA with multicast source. The proposed scheme solves the problem of components deployment of multicast system with security, and has strong scalability as well which means various multicast protocols and group management protocols can run on this system.

Architecture of multicast centralized key management scheme using quantum key distribution and classical symmetric encryption

Multicasting refers to the transmission of a message or information from one sender to multiple receivers simultaneously. Although encryption algorithms can be used to secure transmitted messages among group members, still there are many security aspects for designing a secured multicast cryptosystem. The most important aspects of Multicasting are key generation and management. The researchers have proposed several approaches for solving problems of multicast key distribution and management. In this paper, a secure key generation and distribution solution has been proposed for a single host sending to two or more (N) receivers using centralized Quantum Multicast Key Distribution Centre “QMKDC” and classical symmetric encryption. The proposed scheme uses symmetric classical algorithms for encryption and decryption transmitted messages among multicast group members, but the generated keys which are used for authentication, encryption and decryption also play an important role for designing a secured multicast cryptosystem come from QKD protocols. Authentication verified using EPR entangled Photons and controlled-NOT gate. Multiple requests for initialization as well for transmitting sensitive information handled through priority and sensitivity levels. Multiple members’ communication is achieved with full or partial support of QMKDC.

Cluster and Location Based Overlay Multicast in Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

We propose a novel overlay multicast protocol over wireless sensor network, CLOM (cluster and location based overlay multicast) which use both cluster based approach and location based approach. A cluster based approach is used to manage multicast group consisting of relatively large number of nodes while a location based approach is used to construct a multicast tree with rapidity and low control overhead by using geometric information taken from GPS device. Additionally, the information of damping area and the scheme for reducing the CH node discovery time and control overhead have been introduced into CLOM to improve the performance of the tree. The simulation results showed that CLOM works properly with low data distribution delay and low control overhead where the number of multicast group members is relatively high.

Multicast group membership management in media independent handover services

Currently we are witnessing an explosion of devices able to connect to a variety of wired and wireless access network technologies. This connectivity is increasingly integrating networks composed by sensors, actuators and even utility devices that use private and public networks to relay important information and measurements. The deployment of the so-called Smart Grid technologies allied to the rise of Machine-to-Machine communications require new mechanisms to optimally manage the change of point of attachment to the network of these huge clouds of nodes, assisting in tackling the scale of the problem. With this problematic in mind, the IEEE 802.21 WG started on March 2012 a new project, named IEEE 802.21d, group management services. This amendment establishes the required changes to the original specification, in order to manage the mobility of groups of nodes. This work follows closely the progress of the Task Group on the use cases, requirements and gap analysis, providing in addition a potential solution, integrating new group mechanisms, extensions to the MIH Protocol and associated security enhancements. This solution has been implemented and validated in a custom built testbed, with results showing that the utilisation of Group Control procedures through multicast signalling achieves a lower cost when compared with unicast signalling, in group handover and sensor information dissemination scenarios.