Reliable message delivery method for ad hoc wireless mesh networks based on extended eMFC

摘要

A Data Distribution Service DDS transfers information between nodes (14) in an ad hoc mobile mesh network (12). The DDS includes many different novel features including techniques for coalescing retransmit requests to minimize traffic, providing a reasonable level of reliability for event oriented communications, multicasting retransmissions for use by many nodes (14), and providing other optimizations for multicast traffic. An Enhanced Multicast Forwarding Cache (eMFC) supports multicast transmissions in mobile mesh networks (12) and can be used in combination with the DDS. The enhanced MFC is designed to support mesh node mobility, quality of service, and security requirements that are particular to mesh networks. To achieve these goals, the enhanced MFC draws from a global state maintained by a unicast routing protocol, multicast aware applications, and the distributed DDS and EMFC services. The eMFC distributes this derived global state through the use of an eMFC-specific multicast packet header.