A dynamic multicast routing protocol for visible light communication networks

Due to the current challenges of wireless communications, optical wireless communications, like visible light communication (VLC), have become very popular in the last decade for local area networks. However, current VLC systems focus mainly on one-hop direct transmissions, ignoring that many networking applications require multicast communications. In this sense, we propose MCAST-VLC, a fully functional cross-layer dynamic multicast scheme over a dynamic routing protocol for VLC. MCAST-VLC considers the particular characteristics of the VLC as the need for group management, traffic isolation, a challenging multi-hop route discovery protocol, and a complex cross-layer VLC mechanism to maintain the proper system state. We evaluate our protocol following close real indoor VLC scenarios, previously discussed in the literature, where a light source in a room streams data to a few other VLC devices, and we extend our results numerically. Our results show that MCAST-VLC can handle considerably more network flows than a unicast VLC system under a negligible overhead.