Multicasting in wireless networks with correlated links

Multicasting in wireless networks involves many receiving nodes, links to which may not be completely independent of each other. The number of transmissions needed to successfully communicate a packet over a correlated link network is different from that of the network with independent link assumption; considering link costs are same in both the cases. The cost metric for correlated links is computed using the direct link cost and the correlation between them. In this paper, we propose an analytical expression for cost calculation in case of multicasting over correlated wireless links. The multicast least cost any-path routing scheme is used to identify the least cost route for networks with known link correlations and the results are compared with network with no information of link correlations. We find that multicasting costs are significantly different on considering the link correlation from that of the network with independent links assumption; costs of network links are considered to be same. The least cost route to the destination subset also changes in some cases. Analytical results obtained for multicast network with correlated links is verified through simulations.