Multicasting in wireless neworks using rateless codes and opportunistic routing

Rateless codes, a class of erasure codes, are well suited for multicasting over wireless networks as they reduce the feedback required. Multiple neighboring nodes of a transmitter can hear the transmission in a wireless network. Opportunistic routing uses this to reduce both the number of transmissions and the transmission time. Using a simple rateless encoding scheme, several opportunistic multicast algorithms are proposed and their performance studied in two test networks using simulations.