Towards Multicast Delay Analysis for Ad hoc Wireless Networks

Delay performance of packet transmission in wireless ad hoc networks is highly dependent on the underlying medium access control (MAC) protocol. Since most delay-sensitive applications are transmitted in a multicast fashion, a dedicated access model for multicast is, therefore, needed to represent the actual characteristics of multicast packet access mechanisms. In this paper, a multicast station model is developed in order to provide an anticipated next-hop delay performance prediction, which can be used in a network layer for providing guarantee quality of service (QoS) in an ad hoc multicast network. Based on the assumption of unsaturated traffic, the multicast model is able to provide accurate estimation of access delay values when compared with simulations of access delay.