Adaptive FEC Reliable Multicast MAC Protocol for WLAN

Abstract

For end-to-end wireless multicast applications like multimedia conferencing, voice over IP and video/audio streaming applications which require reliable transmission of frames within short delivery delay, adding MAC layer H-ARQ (hybrid automatic repeat request) can enhance reliability and delivery delay. However, IEEE802.11 does not support reliable multicast due to its inability to exchange ACKs with multiple recipients. In this paper, we propose a protocol that enhances WLAN reliability performances by using adaptive FEC (forward error correction) while maintaining an optimal throughput performance.