Minimizing Delay in Loss-Tolerant MAC Layer Multicast

The goal of this correspondence is to minimize delay in real-time multiple-access channel (MAC) layer multicast by exploiting the broadcast nature of wireless medium and limited loss tolerance of the applications. Multiple transmissions of a packet at the MAC layer significantly reduces the delay than that when only one transmission is allowed. But each additional transmission consumes additional power and increases network load. Therefore, the goal is to design a policy that judiciously uses the limited transmission opportunities so as to deliver each packet in the minimum possible time to the required number of group members. The problem is an instance of the stochastic shortest path problem, and using this formulation computationally simple, closed-form transmission strategies have been obtained in important special cases.