Adaptive Unicast-Multicast Strategies for Over-the-Air Updates in Multi-Receiver Wi-Fi Networks
24th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt), 2026
Abstract
Wireless Over-the-Air (OTA) data delivery in industrial networks must operate reliably across multiple receivers under uncertain channel conditions. This paper studies the problem of efficiently delivering common data to multiple receivers within a limited time horizon by dynamically switching between unicast and multicast transmissions. Based on two complementary optimization objectives reflecting different notions of resource efficiency, we propose three adaptive communication strategies for multi-receiver scenarios. Through extensive simulations under varying channel conditions, we show that adaptive mode selection consistently outperforms static unicast or multicast strategies, with performance gains increasing as the number of receivers grows. For a network with ten receivers, the proposed strategies reduce the total number of transmissions by up to 75% under high multicast reliability and by approximately 25% when multicast reliability is low.
Citation
@inproceedings{jafari2026,
author = {Jafari, Fatemeh and Haider, Valentin Thomas and Parolini,
Luca and Wimmer, Christian and Mehmeti, Fidan and Kellerer,
Wolfgang},
title = {Adaptive {Unicast-Multicast} {Strategies} for {Over-the-Air}
{Updates} in {Multi-Receiver} {Wi-Fi} {Networks}},
booktitle = {24th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization
in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt)},
date = {2026-06-04},
url = {https://lucaparolini.com/publications/papers/adaptive-unicast-multicast-2026/},
langid = {en}
}