A Combined Method of Overhearing-Based Multicast and BitTorrent with Cooperative Group for Local Content Distribution within Wireless LAN

To address increasing demand for content distribution within a wireless LAN, this paper proposes a combined method of overhearing-based multicast and BitTorrent, which is designed to compensate for each other's weaknesses in wireless content distribution: overhearing-based multicast supports BitTorrent by distributing data to many nodes in a traffic-efficient manner, and BitTorrent provides nodes with the ability to download data pieces from multiple nodes in parallel and to retransmit data piece not received by overhearing. This paper also proposes to make nodes in the wireless LAN into a “cooperative group” for the more efficient use of wireless resources. Simulation results demonstrated that the proposed method can accelerate content distribution even when there is radio interference from another wireless LAN.