Minimum Hop-Count Multicast Algorithms for Reliable Multiple-Stream Communications

This article is concerned with the multicast problem in which many destinations simutaneously request mutiple data streams from a source, and require them to be delivered reliably and in minimum hop distance. The basic idea is to induce a sub-graph from a given network using the breadth-first-search principle, and then based on this sub-graph, to construct the minimum hop-count multicast tree. After that, a bandwidth assignment algorithm and a level-by-level acknowledgment method are employed to enforce the reliable, concurrent delivery of the multiple streams. It is shown, through analysis and simulations on a class of random graphs, that our approach significantly reduces the number of transmissions and average packet delay.