| Abstract: | Multicasting is an effective way to provide group communication. In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), multicasting can support a wide variety of applications that are characterized by a close degree of collaboration. Since MANETs exhibit severe resource constraints such as battery power, limited bandwidth, dynamic network topology and lack of centralized administration, multicasting in MANETs become complex. The existing multicast routing protocols concentrate more on quality of service parameters like end‐to‐end delay, jitter, bandwidth and power. They do not stress on the scalability factor of the multicast. In this paper, we address the problem of multicast scalability and propose an efficient scalable multicast routing protocol called ‘Power Aware Scalable Multicast Routing Protocol (PASMRP)’ for MANETs. PASMRP uses the concept of class of service with three priority levels and local re‐routing to provide scalability. The protocol also ensures fair utilization of the resources among the nodes through re‐routing and hence the lifetime of the network is increased. The protocol has been simulated and the results show that PASMRP has better scalability and enhanced lifetime than the existing multicast routing protocols. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
