UNIT: Multicast using Unicast Trees

Abstract

The proliferation of broadband wireless accesses has enabled the provisioning of multimedia communication services. Yet, the increasing demand for group-based multimedia services requires the development of new architectures capable of seamlessly delivering multi-party content and overcoming the prevailing heterogeneity and dynamics of current and next generation communication networks. In order to face these challenges we introduce UNIT, a solution that integrates multicast technologies for both core and access wireless mesh networks. UNIT is focused on the scalability and flexibility of the content delivery framework, adopting a hierarchical control strategy that enables seamless multi-party content transport over heterogeneous networks. Moreover, UNIT performs local reconfigurations of the content distribution tree in response to any context change, without impairing the remaining branches. The evaluation of UNIT in a real world demonstrator proves its feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed mechanisms regarding the control of the multi-party delivery trees.