Position-Based Multicast Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks: An Analytical Study

Abstract

With the prevalence of multimedia applications and the potential commercial usage of Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) in group communications, Quality of Service (QoS) support became a key requirement. Recently, some researchers studied QoS multicast issues in MANETs. Most of the existing QoS multicast routing protocols are designed with flat topology and small networks in mind. In this paper, we investigate the scalability problem of these routing protocols. In particular, a Position-Based QoS Multicast Routing Protocol (PBQMRP) has been developed. PBQMRP builds a source multicast tree guided by the geographic information of the mobile nodes, which helps in achieving more efficient multicast delivery. This protocol depends on the location information of the multicast members which is obtained using a location service algorithm. A virtual backbone structure has been proposed to perform this location service with minimum overhead and this structure is utilized to provide efficient packet transmissions in a dynamic mobile Ad hoc network environment. The performance of PBQMRP is evaluated by performing both quantitative analysis and extensive simulations. The results show that the used virtual clustering is very useful in improving scalability and outperforms other clustering schemes. Compared to On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP), PBQMRP achieves competing packet delivery ratio and significantly lower control overhead.