Analysis and improvement of multicast communications in HomePlug AV-based in-home networks

The increasing number of home devices with communication capabilities is propelling the research into new communication technologies for in-home networks. Power Line Communications (PLC) has proven to be a feasible alternative for this purpose, and the HomePlug AV standard has become one of its most popular solutions. However, while multicast communications are demanded by many services commonly used in home scenarios, the HomePlug AV implements an inefficient mechanism in which they are carried out as successive point-to-point transmissions. The aim of this paper is to outline the limitations of such scheme and to propose algorithms that improve the multicast performance of the standard. To this end, we have developed a simulation tool for HomePlug AV-based in-home networks. It implements the physical and MAC layers, as well as traffic models for the most common home network services. One of its distinctive features is the ability to generate PLC channels with similar correlation to the ones established in a given home. This correlation has been traditionally neglected, leading to inaccurate performance estimations and to discard suitable multicast algorithms. The considered multicast schemes are firstly compared in terms of their physical bit rate. Finally, their capacity to deliver a video streaming service is assessed.