Multicast Group Members Research Articles

MQBV: multicast quality of service swarm bee routing for vehicular ad hoc networks

AbstractVehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are witnessing in recent years a rapid development for road transmissions and are considered as one of the most important types of next generation networks, in which drivers can have access anywhere and anytime to information. However, vehicles have to deal with many challenges such as the links failures due to their frequent mobility as well as limited degrees of freedom in their mobility patterns. In this paper, we propose a new quality of service multicast and multipath routing protocol for VANETs, based on the paradigm of bee's communication, called multicast quality of service swarm bee routing for VANETs (MQBV). The MQBV finds and maintains robust routes between the source node and all multicast group members. Therefore, the average end‐to‐end delay and the normalized overhead load should be reduced, while at the same time increasing the average bandwidth and the packet delivery ratio. Extensive simulation results were obtained using ns‐2 simulator in a realistic VANET settings and demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed protocol. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Multiple Constrained QoS Routing Algorithm for the Wireless Sensor Networks

Routing problem is one of the most important issues to a wireless sensor network (WSN). It is the key problem to find an efficient energy strategy for prolonging network's lifetime because power supply might be impossible. This paper discusses the multicast routing problem of WSN with multiple QoS constraints, which may deal with the delay, bandwidth, hop count and packet reception rat and surplus energy metrics, and finds a minimum resource consumption path while satisfying multiple constraints optimization conditions, and describes a network model for researching the multicast routing problem. It presents a dynamic multicast routing algorithm with multiple QoS constraints (MCQoSRA). The MCQoSRA successfully solves the QoS routing problems when multicast nodes change dynamically in the networks. The MCQoSRA only requires the local state information of the link (or node), but does not require any global network sate to be maintained. In MCQoSRA, a multicast group member can join or leave the multicast session dynamically. The MCQoSRA can effectively decrease the overhead for constructing a multicast tree and the delay of the nodes, and improve the success ratio of seeking links. Simulation results show that the MCQoSRA provides an available means to implement multicast routing, and adapt to all kinds of the topology networks, and have better expansibility.

Dynamic agent-based hierarchical multicast for wireless mesh networks

We propose and analyze a multicast algorithm named Dynamic Agent-based Hierarchical Multicast (DAHM) for wireless mesh networks that supports user mobility and dynamic group membership. The objective of DAHM is to minimize the overall network cost incurred. DAHM dynamically selects multicast routers serving as multicast agents for integrated mobility and multicast service management, effectively combining backbone multicast routing and local unicast routing into an integrated algorithm. As the name suggests, DAHM employs a two-level hierarchical multicast structure. At the upper level is a backbone multicast tree consisting of mesh routers with multicast agents being the leaves. At the lower level, each multicast agent services those multicast group members within its service region. A multicast group member changes its multicast agent when it moves out of the service region of the current multicast agent. The optimal service region size of a multicast agent is a critical system parameter. We propose a model-based approach to dynamically determine the optimal service region size that achieves network cost minimization. Through a comparative performance study, we show that DAHM significantly outperforms two existing baseline multicast algorithms based on multicast tree structures with dynamic updates upon member movement and group membership changes.

Distributing Network Loads in Tree-based Content Distribution System

Content distribution to a large number of concurrent clients stresses both server and network. While the server limitation can be circumvented by deploying server clusters, the network limitation is far less easy to cope with, due to the difficulty in measuring and balancing network load. In this paper, we use two useful network load metrics, the worst link stress (WLS) and the degree of interference (DOI), and formulate the problem as partitioning the clients into disjoint subsets subject to the server capacity constraint so that the WLS and the DOI are reduced for each session and also well balanced across the sessions. We present a network load-aware partition algorithm, which is practicable and effective in achieving the design goals. Through experiments on PlanetLab, we show that the proposed scheme has the remarkable advantages over existing schemes in reducing and balancing the network load. We expect the algorithm and performance metrics can be easily applied to various Internet applications, such as media streaming, multicast group member selection.

A Source-Based Multicast Scheme in IEEE 802.16 Mesh Mode

WiMAX based on IEEE 802.16 is known as one of effective technologies for transmission of multimedia to groups of receivers. There are two operational modes in WiMAX: point to multi point (PMP) for single hop transmission and a mesh node for multi-hop transmission. The current standard only defines unicast transmission under mesh mode thus the performance is deteriorated for multimedia applications with multicast nature. In this paper, we first propose a mechanism for source-based tree topology construction aiming at facilitating multicast transmission in WiMAX mesh network. In the proposed approach, the multicast tree is constructed considering available link’s bandwidth and multicast group members. After constructing the multicast tree we propose a novel scheduling algorithm to improve the transmission throughout. In the proposed scheduling algorithm a parent node uses broadcasting when the number of its children belonging to a multicast group excesses a threshold. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed multicast mechanism improves multicast transmission efficiency and reduces scheduling time slots noticeably in comparison to the approach mandated by the IEEE 802.16 standard.

MAC based Approaches for Multicast Source Authentication

With the explosive growth of the internet and growing demand for novel types of group communication, simultaneous transmission of digital information becomes prevalent model of communication. They have applications in TV over internet, video-conferencing, news feeds, stock quotes, online video games and software updates. Some of them need one to many communications while others need many to many communications. So in these applications authenticating members of multicast groups to verify that it is originated from authenticated source plays a significant role. A large number of protocols are proposed to support source authentication in multicasting. In this paper we classify the existing source authentication protocols and describe the MAC based protocols to verify the identity of sender.

Rotation based secure multicast key management for batch rekeying operations

Many emerging security-rich network applications such as pay-per-view, video broadcasting, video on demand and videoconferencing are based on multicast communication. Thus, securing multicast communications is an important Internet design issue in most of the network applications. In such a scenario providing high security for multicast group members using a common group key is a challenging task. Most of the previous literature describes key tree approaches to distribute the multicast group key in which the rekeying cost is high for batch joining or leaving operations. The marking algorithms proposed in the past focus on batch join and batch leave requests. However, merging and batch balanced algorithms consider batch join more and do not focus much on batch leave operations. In this paper, we present rotation based key tree algorithms to make the tree balanced even when batch leave requests are more than batch joins operations. These proposed algorithms not only maintain a balanced key tree, but also reduce the rekeying costs in comparison with the existing algorithms when batch leave operation is higher than batch join operation (JM < LM). Our simulation result shows that this proposed scheme reduces 20%–30% rekeying cost compared to the existing approaches.

Hybrid discrete PSO with GA operators for efficient QoS-multicast routing

QoS multicast routing is a non-linear combinatorial optimization problem that arises in many multimedia applications. Providing QoS support is crucial to guarantee effective transportation of multimedia service in multicast communication. Computing the band-width-delay constrained least cost multicast routing tree is a NP-complete problem. In this paper, a novel heuristic QoS multicast routing algorithm with bandwidth and delay constraints is proposed. The algorithm applies the discrete particle swarm optimization algorithm to optimally search the solution space for the optimal multicast tree which satisfies the QoS requirement. New PSO operators have been introduced to modify the original PSO velocity and position update rules to adapt to the discrete solution space of the multicast routing problem. A new adjustable PSO-GA hybrid multicast routing algorithm which combines PSO with genetic operators was proposed. The proposed hybrid technique combines the strengths of PSO and GA to realize the balance between natural selection and good knowledge sharing to provide robust and efficient search of the solution space. Two driving parameters are utilized in the adjustable hybrid model to optimize the performance of the PSO-GA hybrid by giving preference to either PSO or GA. The proposed algorithm is utilized with an efficient dynamic component that is capable of handling dynamic situations arising due to either change in the multicast group membership or node/link failure without the reconstruction of the multicast tree. Simulation results show that the proposed hybrid algorithm can overcome the disadvantages of particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithm, and achieve better QoS performance. Results show that with the correct combination of GA and PSO the hybrid does outperform both the standard PSO and GA models, The flexibility in the choice of parameters in the hybrid algorithm improves the evolutionary operators to generate strong-developing individuals that can achieve faster convergence and avoids premature convergence to local optima.

RoMR: robust multicast routing in mobile wireless networks

AbstractSupport for multicast services is crucial for content distribution in mobile wireless networks (MWNs). Efficient multicasting in MWNs faces challenges not encountered in other types of networks such as the mobility of nodes, the tenuous status of communication links, limited resources, and indefinite knowledge of the network topology. This paper addresses these challenges by providing a framework and architecture with proactive and reactive components to support multicasting in MWNs emphasizing reliability and efficiency of end‐to‐end packet delivery. The architecture includes the Robust Multicast Routing protocol (RoMR) to provide efficient multicast services for content distritbution MWNs. RoMR's architecture includes a proactive and reactive component. The proactive component calculates multiple multicast trees based on the prediction of future availability of the links and the assumption that the trees will become disconnected over time. The reactive components respond to changes in the network topology due to the mobility of the nodes and to changes in the multicast group's membership. The novelty of the proposed protocol stems from integrating techniques that have not previously been combined into a multicasting protocol and a unique method to calculate the relative weights of the links. In addition to the specifications of the protocol, a simulation framework was developed to test different implementations of the various components of RoMR. Simulations compared the performance of the basic version of RoMR to a version that ignored link weights, and to the Multicast Optimized Link State Routing (MOLSR) protocol, a source tree‐based, topology‐aware multicast protocol. A statistical analysis of the results showed that RoMR performed better, overall, than the other two protocols. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

An intelligent backbone formation algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks based on distributed learning automata

In wireless ad hoc networks, due to the dynamic topology changes, multi hop communications and strict resource limitations, routing becomes the most challenging issue, and broadcasting is a common approach which is used to alleviate the routing problem. Global flooding is a straightforward broadcasting method which is used in almost all existing topology-based routing protocols and suffers from the notorious broadcast storm problem. The connected dominating set (CDS) formation is a promising approach for reducing the broadcast routing overhead in which the messages are forwarded along the virtual backbone induced by the CDS. In this paper, we propose an intelligent backbone formation algorithm based on distributed learning automata (DLA) in which a near optimal solution to the minimum CDS problem is found. Sending along this virtual backbone alleviates the broadcast storm problem as the number of hosts responsible for broadcast routing is reduced to the number of hosts in backbone. The proposed algorithm can be also used in multicast routing protocols, where the only multicast group members need to be dominated by the CDS. In this paper, the worst case running time and message complexity of the proposed backbone formation algorithm to find a 1/(1-@e) optimal size backbone are computed. It is shown that by a proper choice of the learning rate of the proposed algorithm, a trade-off between the running time and message complexity of algorithm with the backbone size can be made. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the existing CDS-based backbone formation algorithms in terms of the network backbone size, and its message overhead is only slightly more than the least cost algorithm.

Dynamic buffer partitioning and replacement for reliable multicast

ACP is a buffer management protocol applied to shared environment.However,when multicast group number or group member changes,ACP can hardly adjust its allocation quota in time and this will lead to the decrease of cache utilization ratio.To address these drawbacks,a new buffer management scheme called Adaptive and Active Reliable Multicast Protocol(AARM) was proposed,for large-scale multicast network.Simulation results show,AARM outperforms ACP in reducing recovery latency and bandwidth consumption,and raising network throughput.

Dynamic buffer partitioning and replacement for reliable multicast

ACP is a buffer management protocol applied to shared environment.However,when multicast group number or group member changes,ACP can hardly adjust its allocation quota in time and this will lead to the decrease of cache utilization ratio.To address these drawbacks,a new buffer management scheme called Adaptive and Active Reliable Multicast Protocol(AARM) was proposed,for large-scale multicast network.Simulation results show,AARM outperforms ACP in reducing recovery latency and bandwidth consumption,and raising network throughput.

Markov Chain Trust Model for Trust-Value Analysis and Key Management in Distributed Multicast MANETs

To increase efficiency in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), the multicast MANET is proposed for a sender that sends packets to several receivers through a multicast session. In MANETs, multicast group members frequently change due to node mobility; thus, supporting secure authentication and authorization in a multicast MANET is more critical than that in a wired network with a centralized certificate authentication (CA) server. This paper thus proposes a two-step secure authentication approach for multicast MANETs. First, a Markov chain trust model is proposed to determine the trust value (TV) for each one-hop neighbor. A node's TV is analyzed from its previous trust manner that was performed in this group. The proposed trust model is proven as an ergodic continuous-time Markov chain model. Second, the node with the highest TV in a group will be selected as the CA server. To increase reliability, the node with the second highest TV will be selected as the backup CA server that will take over CA when CA fails. The procedures of the secure authentication for group management are detailed. The security analysis of each procedure is analyzed to guarantee that the proposed approach achieves a secure reliable authentication in multicast MANETs. In addition, several famous attacks have been analyzed and discussed. Numerical results indicate that the analytical TV of each mobile node is very close to that of simulation under various situations. The speed of the convergence of the analytical TV shows that the analyzed result is independent of initial values and trust classes. This is a good feature of analytical models.

A survey on wired and mobile multicast group membership management protocol

Multicast is becoming a critical approach in mobile environments, as it ensures the dissemination of services to multiple users simultaneously. In order to deploy mobile multicasts, mobile routing protocol and membership management protocol become essential. As for mobile routing, various mobile ad hoc routing protocols have been proposed and analysed. This paper aims to present a survey on wired and mobile group membership protocols that have been designed by analysing their operation, advantages and disadvantages. This gives an overview of each proposed protocol and an idea of how these features could be adapted into mobile group management protocol.

End-to-end epidemic multicast loss recovery: Analysis of scalability and robustness

For ensuring reliability at the transport level end-to-end multicasting, an efficient loss recovery mechanism is indispensable. We consider scalability, topology independence and robustness as the significant features that such a mechanism should offer, and demonstrate that an epidemic loss recovery approach is superior in all these aspects. We also show that the epidemic approach transparently handles network link failures by using pair-wise propagation of information, and compare it with feedback controlled loss recovery on identical network settings. The contribution of this work is the simulative analysis of recovery overhead distribution on multicast group members in the case of various link failures on the network, the impact of group size, randomized system-wide noise and message rate on scalability, and examination of various scenarios modeling the overlay networks. We investigate the important features of epidemic multicast loss recovery extensively together and reach concrete results on realistic network scenarios.

SIP Multicast-Based Mobile Quality-of-Service Support over Heterogeneous IP Multimedia Subsystems

The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) all-IP network supports IP multimedia services through the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS). This paper proposes a mobile quality-of-service (QoS) framework for heterogeneous IMS interworking. To reduce the handoff disruption time, this framework supports the IMS mobility based on the concept of session initiation protocol (SIP) multicast. In our approach, the mobility of a user equipment (UE) is modeled as a transition in the multicast group membership. With the concept of dynamic shifting of the multicast group's members, the flow of actual data packets can be switched to the new route as quickly as possible. To overcome mobility impact on service guarantees, UEs need to make QoS resource reservations in advance at neighboring IMS networks, where they may visit during the lifetime of the ongoing sessions. These locations become the leaves of the multicast tree in our approach. To obtain more efficient use of the scarce wireless bandwidth, our approach allows UEs to temporarily exploit the inactive bandwidths reserved by other UEs in the current IMS/access network. Analytic and simulation models are developed to investigate our resource reservation scheme. The results indicate that our scheme yields comparable performance to that of the previously proposed channel assignment schemes.

Multicast routing in mobile ad hoc networks by using a multiagent system

Multicast routing in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) poses several challenges due to inherent characteristics of the network such as node mobility, reliability, scarce resources, etc. This paper proposes an Agent Based Multicast Routing Scheme (ABMRS) in MANETs, which uses a set of static and mobile agents. Five types of agents are used in the scheme: Route manager static agent, Network initiation mobile agent, Network management static agent, Multicast initiation mobile agent and Multicast management static agent. The scheme operates in the following steps: (1) to identify reliable nodes; (2) to connect reliable nodes through intermediate nodes; (3) to construct a backbone for multicasting using reliable nodes and intermediate nodes; (4) to join multicast group members to the backbone; (5) to perform backbone and group members management in case of mobility. The scheme has been simulated in various network scenarios to test operation effectiveness in terms of performance parameters such as packet delivery ratio, control overheads and group reliability. Also, a comparison of proposed scheme with MAODV (Multicast Ad hoc on-demand Distance Vector) protocol is presented. ABMRS performs better than MAODV as observed from the simulation. ABMRS offers flexible and adaptable multicast services and also supports component based software development.

An optimal discrete rate allocation for overlay video multicasting

Recently, overlay multicasting has been considered as an important approach for providing multicast services over the Internet. Due to the limited capacity and the heterogeneity of the Internet clients, using overlay multicasting for video streaming applications is a challenging task. Designing bandwidth-efficient overlay structures and optimal resource allocation are the most important techniques that can be considered to deal with these challenges. In this paper, we propose an optimal distributed rate allocation scheme to solve the rate allocation problem in overlay multirate video multicasting systems. Our objective in the optimal rate allocation algorithm is the optimization of the overall video quality perceived within the multicast group members that organize themselves into an overlay tree. In our proposed solution, each overlay node of a given overlay tree allocates the rates to its children in a way that the overall video quality perceived in the multicast group is optimized. In addition to the mathematical analysis of the algorithm, its effectiveness is supported through simulation.

Cost Analysis of BestRelay Retransmission Trees for Reliable Multicasting

In this paper, we address how to construct efficient retransmission trees for reliable multicast. Efficiency of retransmission trees mainly depends on locations of repairers, which are in charge of retransmitting lost packets. We propose an algorithm for each receiver to find a repairer for efficient recovery. The resulting tree for retransmission is organized by pairs of a receiver and a repairer which is the host nearest to the receiver among the multicast group members nearer to the sender. We formally prove that the proposed algorithm realizes reliable multicast with only constant times of a lower bound cost achievable through impractical router support. We also evaluate the algorithm through extensive simulations.

Multi‐path routing scheme for non‐interactive multicast communications

AbstractThis paper proposes a multicast routing algorithm that makes use of multiple node‐disjoint distribution trees for its routing from the source to the multicast group members. The specialty of this scheme is that the different packets of a message between a source and destinations are routed through node‐disjoint paths to provide reliable and secure multicast communication. In this proposed routing scheme the computation of the node‐disjoint path for packet routing is done either at a centralized route moderator or in a distributed fashion at all destinations in order to avoid single point failure. An effective provision is made to enable new members to join the existing multicast trees and to prune leaving members. The performance parameters of the proposed reliable and secure multi‐path routing scheme are studied under various network conditions using GloMoSim. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.