Multi-radio cooperative retransmission scheme for reliable machine-to-machine multicast services

Mobile Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market is expected to grow dramatically in the upcoming years; predictions agree that the majority of wireless traffic will correspond to this type of communication. M2M devices deployed in proximity to each other might be handled as groups or clusters when sharing the same communication attributes and serving to achieve joint target. Moreover, devices that feature multiple radio interfaces are commonly used nowadays; they can be connected to a cellular access network, e.g., LTE, and simultaneously to a short-range network, also known as capillary network, among surrounding devices, e.g., Wi-Fi and ZigBee. For services such as over-the-air (OTA) firmware update, the same information shall be sent to all the group members over the cellular access network. A Multi-Radio Cooperative Retransmission Scheme for Reliable Multicast Services is presented as a solution to reliably manage reception errors occurred over the cellular network; by carrying out retransmissions over a short-range network it is possible to reduce both the traffic load over the cellular link and the energy consumption in error recovery. Ns-3 simulations were performed with LTE network models to analyze the scheme in terms of energy consumption and prove its usefulness in autonomous, battery driven, devices.