Abstract
In this paper, a distributed multicast tree migration scheme for the ATM-based personal communication networks is proposed. This distributed scheme automatically recognizes inefficient multicast trees and migrates them to better ones, if any. During the migration, the property of multicast services is also preserved and the data transmissions are synchronized. The performance of this scheme is evaluated via simulation, which shows that the proposed multicast tree migration scheme dramatically reduces the number of channels consumed per multicast tree. As a result, the number of successful established multicast trees is increased, the tree construction blocking rate is reduced significantly, and the diameters of multicast trees are kept as small as possible.