Edinburgh Napier University

  Wireless Community Networks (WCNs) have emerged as a cost-effective ubiquitous broadband connectivity solution, offering a wide range of services in a given geographical area. QoS-aware multicast over WCNs is among the most challenging issues and has attracted a lot of attention in recent times. The existing multicast schemes in WCNs suffer in terms of several key performance metrics, such as, latency, jitter and throughput, particularly in large-scale networks. Consequently, these schemes cannot accommodate the desired performance levels, especially when dealing with high-bandwidth applications that require efficient gateway-based management. To fill in this gap, a new strategy for supporting QoS-aware multicast in large-scale WCNs is proposed in this paper. Specifically, a new Gateway based Multi-hop Routing algorithm (GMR) is firstly proposed to enhance the routing management capability of the network. Built upon GMR, a new Multicast Gateway Multi-hop Routing algorithm (MGMR) is devised to cope with high-bandwidth applications in WCNs. The MGMR is the first of its kind that considers both the capability of gateway-based management and the requirements of high-bandwidth applications. Extensive simulation experiments and performance results demonstrate the superiority of both GMR and MGMR when compared to other methods under various operating conditions.