Experimental Evaluation of Large Scale WiFi Multicast Rate Control

TL;DR

This paper presents MuDRA, a multicast rate control algorithm for large WiFi groups, demonstrating high throughput and quality guarantees through extensive experiments with over 150 nodes.

Contribution

The paper introduces MuDRA, a novel rate adaptation algorithm that balances responsiveness and stability, providing performance guarantees at scale for WiFi multicast.

Findings

MuDRA outperforms existing schemes in large-scale tests.

Supports high throughput multicast to hundreds of nodes.

Achieves high video quality for 90% of receivers.

Abstract

WiFi multicast to very large groups has gained attention as a solution for multimedia delivery in crowded areas. Yet, most recently proposed schemes do not provide performance guarantees and none have been tested at scale. To address the issue of providing high multicast throughput with performance guarantees, we present the design and experimental evaluation of the Multicast Dynamic Rate Adaptation (MuDRA) algorithm. MuDRA balances fast adaptation to channel conditions and stability, which is essential for multimedia applications. MuDRA relies on feedback from some nodes collected via a light-weight protocol and dynamically adjusts the rate adaptation response time. Our experimental evaluation of MuDRA on the ORBIT testbed with over 150 nodes shows that MuDRA outperforms other schemes and supports high throughput multicast flows to hundreds of receivers while meeting quality requirements. MuDRA can support multiple high quality video streams, where 90% of the nodes report excellent or very good video quality.