An Efficient and Reliable Core-Assisted Multicast Routing Protocol in Mobile Ad-Hoc Network

Abstract

Mobile ad-hoc network is a collection of mobile nodes that are connected wirelessly forming random topology through decentralized administration. In Mobile ad-hoc networks, multicasting is one of the important mechanisms which can increase network efficiency and reliability by sending multiple copies in a single transmission without using several unicast transmissions. Receiver initiated mesh based multicasting approach provides reliability to Mobile ad-hoc network by reducing overhead. Receiver initiated mesh based multicast routing strongly relies on proper selection of a core node. The existing schemes suffer from two main problems. First, the core selection process is not efficient, that usually selects core in a manner that may decrease core lifetime and deteriorate network performance in the form of frequent core failures. Second, the existing schemes cause too much delay for core re-selection(s) process. The performance becomes worse in situations where frequent core failures occur due to high mobility which causes excessive flooding for reconfigurations of another core and hence delays the on-going communication and compromising the network reliability. The objectives of the paper are as follows. First, we propose an efficient method in which the core is selected within the receiver group on the basis of multiple parameters like battery capacity and location, as a result, a more stable core is selected with minimum core failure. Second, to increase the reliability and decrease the delay, we introduce the idea of the mirror core. The mirror core takes the responsibility as a main core after the failure of the primary core and has certain advantages such as maximum reliability, minimum delay and minimizing the data collection process. We implement and evaluate the proposed solution in Network Simulator 2. The result shows that this scheme performs better than the existing benchmark schemes in terms of the packet delivery ratio, overhead and throughput.