A reliable multicast MAC protocol for Wi-Fi Direct 802.11 networks

Wi-Fi Direct is one of the most prevailing technologies in the field of wireless networking. With the advent of various useful applications, it is facing many challenges namely: efficient group formation/communication, power saving, compatibility issues etc. In this paper, we focus on the fundamental problem of reliability in multicast communication in the context of Wi-Fi Direct. To this end, our paper makes the following contributions: 1) It explores the problems of multicast in the context of Wi-Fi Direct. 2) It checks the performance of Standard Multicast (SM) and Leader Based Multicast (LBM) protocols for Wi-Fi Direct. 3) It presents an Enhanced Leader Based Multicast (ELBM) protocol for Wi-Fi Direct. The ELBM reduces collision and interference of multicast data transmission by improving channel access mechanism and selecting an optimal representative multicast receiver, therefore, it enhances the reliability of multicast transmission. We have tested the performance of all the three protocols through simulations. The simulation results show that the ELBM increases throughput of multicast transmission by up to two times compared to the existing mechanisms, as well as improving packet delivery ratio of multicast data.