Efficient and secure group communications in wireless mesh networks

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In a wireless mesh network (WMN), wireless routers provide multi-hop connectivity from a host to either other hosts in the same network or the Internet, enabling networking capability where a wired infrastructure is unavailable or expensive to deploy (e.g., rural areas, water surfaces, hard-to-wire buildings). Group communications (or multicast) are a form of communication that delivers information from a source to a set of destinations simultaneously in an efficient manner. Multicast supports many important applications such as distribution of stock quotes, financial data, billing records, software, newspapers, pay-per-view movies; audio/video conference; distance learning; and distributed online games. Although multicast plays an important role in these applications, research on multicasting in WMNs is still in its infancy. Few well-designed and well-tested solutions are currently available, and they focus on only one aspect of communications (e.g., routing). In this long-term project, we propose a comprehensive suite of protocols to support efficient and secure group communications in WMNs, which addresses the following main problems: routing; flow/congestion control; quality-of-service guarantees for real-time and multimedia applications; reliable multicast; network security provision; host mobility management; and inter-operations with the Internet and other types of wireless networks . Wireless mesh networking has proven to be a key technology for next-generation wireless networks. This project, upon completion, will enable multicast services to be extended to areas served by wireless mesh technologies such as remote areas, small towns, water surfaces, and transporation systems. The success of the project not only contributes to the advancement of wireless networking, but also makes significant impacts on Canada's economy (distribution of financial data, advertising), health care system (remote medical diagnosis), technology (distributed interactive simulations, multimedia communications), education system (distance learning), social communication (news distribution, tele-conferencing), and entertainment industry (pay-per-view movies, online games).