Energy efficiency in energy-limited wireless networks for session-based multicasting

We consider source-initiated multicast session traffic in an ad hoc wireless network, under hard constraints on the available transmission energy as well as on bandwidth and transceiver resources. We compare energy-limited and energy-efficient communications, and we illustrate the impact of these overlapping (and sometimes conflicting) considerations on network operation. We use alternative energy-based cost metrics with two algorithms for the construction of multicast trees. These algorithms are evaluated on the basis of several appropriate performance measures. A remarkable result is that they deliver a volume of traffic that is nearly independent of the bandwidth and transceiver resources over a wide range of parameter values