Data Overhead Impact of Multipath Routing for Multicast in Wireless Mesh Networks

Multipath routing has been proved effective in mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) for coping with link failures resulting from node mobility. In wireless mesh networks (WMNs) where routers are generally static, the traffic carried by the backup paths may adversely impact other flows and the multicast group itself, because these paths increase the number of transmissions and thus the level of interference and congestion in the network. This impact, however, has not been examined, especially for multicast routing. We present simulation results that quantify the impact of data overhead of multicast multipath routing compared with single-path routing.