Multicast for 6LoWPAN Wireless Sensor Networks

At present, six low-power wireless personal area network uses the broadcasting in the link layer (L2) to achieve the multicast in the network layer (L3). Since broadcasting is expensive, this paper proposes a multicast scheme to achieve the L3 multicast with the L2 unicast. In this scheme, an L3 multicast message is transmitted to each member in a multicast group in the unicast way, so the multicast cost and delay are reduced. This paper also presents the handover algorithm to ensure that the multicast communication can be properly performed when the group members move. This paper evaluates the performance of this scheme, and the results show that this scheme effectively reduces the multicast cost and delay.