QoS-based multicast routing for distributing layered video to heterogeneous receivers in rate-based networks

We design an effective multicast routing algorithm for distributing layered multicast video to heterogeneous receivers in networks with rate-based link schedulers. The multicast tree constructed by the algorithm fulfils the QoS requirements imposed by heterogeneous receivers both in terms of bandwidth and delay, and at the same time, consumes as little network resource as possible. For the purpose of scalability, the proposed multicast routing algorithm is decentralized and can adapt to network and membership change. To facilitate construction of such a multicast tree in a distributed manner we equip each node with an auxiliary routing table, and propose procedures for updating/maintaining the auxiliary routing table. Simulation results indicate that the multicast tree constructed by the proposed algorithm is more resource efficient than those constructed by other existing algorithms, especially when there exist multiple alternative paths to multicast receivers in the network