Multicasting, Geocasting, and Anycasting in Sensor and Actuator Networks

Abstract

This chapter reviews the scenarios where a given message is sent from a single source to possibly several destinations. These scenarios can be subdivided into multicasting, geocasting, multiratecasting, and anycasting. In multicasting, a given message must be routed from one node to a number of destinations whose locations may be arbitrary and spread over the network. Geocasting destinations are all nodes located in a given geographical area. Multiratecasting is a generalization of multicasting, where regular messages are sent from a source to several destinations, possibly at a different rate for each destination. Finally, in an anycasting scenario, a source must send a message to any node among a given set of destinations, preferably only one. Each of these scenarios corresponds to a typical use case in sensor and actuator networks.

Stateless Reliable Geocasting

“…The flooding is stateful. Moreover, as noted by Casteigts et al [2], Geographic-Forwarding-Geocast may fail to deliver the message to all devices in the geocast region, if the region is disconnected and the only connectivity is through outside devices. Virtual Surrounding Face [13] avoids this problem by pre-computing in advance all planar faces that intersect the geocast region.…”

“…Bose et al [1] propose GFG-based depth-first face exploration to implement geocasting. In principle, this solution is stateless, however Casteigts et al [2] point out that it requires considerable message overhead and the only way to mitigate this overhead is to pre-process the network topology to give devices additional information. This preprocessing is stateful and may require significant communication resources.…”