Opportunistic Multi-cast Routing for Improved Multimedia Delivery in Emerging Wireless Networks

Multicast routing and cognitive radio (CR) technology are essential in enabling efficient large-scale video sharing and data dissemination in emerging multi-hop wireless networks (e.g., 5G and B5G). Multicast routing can be effectively performed if the spectrum is always accessible to the network. However, the time-variant dynamic primary users (PUs) activities, spectrum heterogeneity across the multi-hop CR network (CRN), and the PU's access priority complicate the task of designing efficient CR-based Multicast routing algorithms. This paper presents a hierarchical multicast routing algorithm for multi-hop CRNs that utilizes the shortest path tree (SPT) concept. The proposed mechanism employs the packet success probability metric to perform the channel assignment over each defined layer in the SPT. The most reliable channel over each layer is utilized to deliver the multicast transmission. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is investigated through simulations. Compared to baseline algorithms, the proposed algorithm reveals significant performance improvement in throughput and packet delivery rate (PDR) under different operating scenarios.