Determining the minimum number of transmissions in multicast packet radio networks

The objective of this paper is to develop and implement a practical technique to compute optimum or near optimum paths from a single source to multiple destinations in a packet radio network (PRN) environment. This problem is common and is usually solved by making copies of the packet, then addressing and sending them independently to each destination. This type of solution makes for very inefficient use of the communications channel bandwidth yet is frequently tolerated because determination of an optimal solution yielding a minimal number of transmissions is NP-complete. This paper proposes a resolution to this problem by employment of the Hopfield neural network