Group-based relay protocol for reliable multicast services for future wireless networks

With the explosive growth of broadband Internet technologies, novel multicast services can be made available. The IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN has been widely deployed driven by the unprecedented demand for ubiquitous wireless data services. The IEEE 802.11e standard has been further developed for offering classified services for various multimedia applications. However, the IEEE 802.11e does not support any MAC layer recovery for multicast frames. Additionally, while multicast receivers are located at different locations with different channel conditions, the source might compromise to transmit multicast frames at the lowest data rate. As the number of wireless multicast receivers grows, the number of retransmissions increases due to link errors or unexpected collisions. In this paper, we make use of multiple modulation types specified by IEEE 802.11 and present a group-based relay approach to multicast services over error-prone wireless networks.