A Novel Scalable Multicast Mesh Routing Protocol for Mobile ad hoc Networks

In recent years the use of portable and wireless equipment is becoming more widespread, and as in many situations communication infrastructure might not be available, wireless networks such as Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are becoming increasingly important. A mobile ad hoc network is a collection of nodes that exchanges data over wireless paths. The nodes in this network are free to move at any time, therefore the network topology changes in an unpredictable way. Since there is no fixed infrastructure support in mobile ad hoc networks, each node functions as a host and a router. Due to mobility, continuous change in topology, limited bandwidth, and reliance on batteries; designing a reliable and scalable routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks is a challenging task. Multicast routing protocols have been developed for routing packets in mobile ad hoc networks. Existing protocols suffer from overheads and scalability. As the number of senders, groups, and mobility speed increases, the routing overhead and the packet collision increases, and therefore the packet delivery ratio decreases. Thus none of the existing proposed multicast routing protocols perform well in every situation. In this study a novel multicast routing protocol for ad hoc networks is proposed. It is an efficient and scalable routing protocol, and named Network Sender Multicast Routing Protocol (NSMRP). NSMRP is a reactive mesh based multicast routing protocol. A central node called mesh sender (MS) is selected periodically from among the group(s) sender(s) to create one mesh in order to be used in forwarding control and data packets to all multicast group(s) member(s). One invitation message will be periodically flooded to all group(s) member(s) by MS to join the group(s). The proposed routing protocol is evaluated by simulation and compared with a well known routing protocol. The results are analyzed and conclusions are drawn