Congestion Controlled Adaptive Lightweight Multicast in Wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Ken Tanga
ktang@cs.ucla.edu
Katia Obraczkab
katia@cse.ucsc.edu
Sung-Ju Leec
sjlee@hpl.hp.com
Mario Gerlaa
gerla@cs.ucla.edu

aComputer Science Department, University of California, Los Angeles
bComputer Engineering Department, University of California, Santa Cruz
cInternet Systems & Storage Lab, Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA

Abstract

The use of contention-based MAC protocols combined with hidden terminal problems make multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks much more sensitive to load and congestion than wired networks or even wireless cellular networks. Therefore, we argue that multicast reliability in ad hoc networks cannot be achieved solely by retransmission of lost packets as is typically done in wired networks with protocols such as SRM. We contend that in order to achieve reliable multicast delivery in such networks, besides reliability mechanisms, we must also consider jointly two components: reliability and congestion control. In this paper, we propose CALM, a congestion controlled, adaptive, lightweight multicast transport protocol and show that congestion control alone can significantly improve reliable packet delivery in ad hoc networks when compared to traditional "wired" reliable multicast protocols. The rationale is that once congestion is under control and a reasonable delivery rate is achieved (i.e., in the 90 percentile), traditional reliable multicast techniques (at the transport or application level) become much more effective in delivering 100% reliability.

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