Interference-aware multicast for wireless multihop networks

In this paper, we revisit the problem of optimal tree-based routing structures for multicast in wireless multihop networks, but accounting for the impact of interference. Our analysis is based on the most accurate known interference model, namely the SINR-based physical interference model. We first study the problem in a low-intensity multicast scenario where we derive optimal node selection strategies for different subtree structures. We then extend these analyses to account for interference between consecutive packets in higher-rate multicast scenarios. Based on these analyses, we propose and evaluate two new multicast routing structures: the interference-aware Steiner tree (IAST) algorithm, which requires global knowledge of node locations, and the fixed-distance tree merging (FTM) algorithm, which does not require global knowledge. We show that our proposed algorithms provide up to 57% reduction in schedule length and up to 41% increase in goodput over existing tree-based routing structures.