Improving QoS in Multicasting Through Adaptive Redundancy

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), Quality of Service (QoS) of a multicast protocol is one of the most important performance metrics. Channel conditions and network topology frequently change, and in order to achieve a certain QoS, complex algorithms and protocols are needed. Often channel conditions are neglected during the design of a multicast protocol. However, vulnerability against channel errors can severely cripple the performance of a multicast protocol. Mesh networking inspired multicasting approaches introduce increased redundancy in the routing process to overcome the performance loss due to channel errors. Although utilizing multiple paths from senders to receivers results in higher reliability, under better channel conditions the additional redundancy may not be needed in terms of reliability, and increased redundancy causes increased overhead. Therefore, we propose a mesh networking inspired approach that adapts the amount of redundancy according to the current link conditions. We show that this approach can achieve good QoS levels for real-time traffic scenarios while simultaneously reducing unnecessary energy dissipation.