Multicast Communications in Ad Hoc Networks Using Directional Antennas: A Lifetime-Centric Approach

We consider a wireless ad hoc network where each node employs a single-beam directional antenna and is provisioned with limited energy. We are interested in an online routing algorithm for successive multicast communication requests with the aim of maximizing the network lifetime. The beam-forming property, which is associated with single-beam directional antennas, introduces some unique problems that do not exist for omnidirectional antennas and, therefore, significantly increases the design space for routing algorithms. The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we provide some important theoretical understanding on various multicast problems and deduce that even an offline version of this problem is NP-hard. Second, we develop a highly competitive online routing algorithm that takes the network lifetime consideration directly into iterative calculations and show that an algorithm that is designed under this methodology provides consistently better performance than the current state-of-the-art algorithm that only considers remaining energy. The theoretical results and routing algorithm in this paper offer some important insights on algorithm design for energy-constrained wireless ad hoc networks with directional antennas