A genetic-inspired joint multicast routing and channel assignment algorithm in wireless mesh networks

This paper proposes a genetic algorithm (GA) based optimization approach to search a minimum-interference multicast tree which satisfies the end-to-end delay constraint and optimizes the usage of the scarce radio network resource in wireless mesh networks. The path-oriented encoding method is used and each chromosome is represented by a tree data structure (i.e., a set of paths). Since we expect the multicast trees on which the minimum-interference channel assignment can be produced, a fitness function that returns the total channel conflict is devised. Crossover and mutation are well designed to adapt to the tree structure. A simple yet effective channel assignment algorithm is proposed to reduce the channel conflict. Simulation results show that the proposed GA based multicast algorithm achieves better performance in terms of both the total channel conflict and the tree cost than that of a well known algorithm.