A flexible real-time multicasting protocol in multi-hop industrial cyber physical system

The adoption of multi-hop wireless networks has received attention from industrial cyber-physical system. In industrial applications, real-time multicasting is widely used for controlling and monitoring machines. In multi-hop wireless networks, the end-to-end delay depends on the end-to-end distance. Existing real-time multicasting studies use a fixed distance limitation to achieving real-time transmission without complexity from time factor. However, when given time factor changes, existing protocols might lead to real-time fails and inefficient multicasting because of the difference between the fixed distance limitation and the maximum transmittable distance under the given time. To solve the problems, in this paper, we propose a flexible real-time multicasting protocol based on given time factor. We first introduce a scheme for obtaining a maximum transmittable distance under a given time. Then we provide a real-time multicasting protocol based on the maximum transmittable distance. Our simulation results show that the proposed protocol achieves higher real-time delivery success ratio and energy efficiency than existing protocols.