CoreRM: Cooperative loss recovery for reliable multicast in Ad hoc networks

Reliable multicast in Ad hoc networks is challenging due to high error rate, low bandwidth, limited node power, and highly dynamic topology changes. In this paper, an efficient loss recovery scheme is proposed for reliable multicast (CoreRM). The basic idea is to apply the notion of cooperative communication to support local loss recovery. According different packet loss cases, CoreRM tries to retrieve the lost packet through progressively cooperating with neighboring nodes, upstream nodes or source node. In order to minimize recovery latency and retransmission overhead, CoreRM caches not only data packets but also the path which could be used for future possible packet recovery. In CoreRM, upstream nodes suppress duplicate NAKs to tackle feedback implosion. Both analytical and simulation results reveal that CoreRM significantly improves the multicast performance in terms of throughput and recovery latency compared with UDP and PGM.