Link stability based multicast routing scheme in MANET

The group-oriented services are one of the primary application classes that are addressed by Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) in recent years. To support such services, multicast routing is used. Thus, there is a need to design stable and reliable multicast routing protocols for MANETs to ensure better packet delivery ratio, lower delays and reduced overheads. In this paper, we propose a mesh based multicast routing scheme that finds stable multicast path from source to receivers. The multicast mesh is constructed by using route request and route reply packets with the help of multicast routing information cache and link stability database maintained at every node. The stable paths are found based on selection of stable forwarding nodes that have high stability of link connectivity. The link stability is computed by using the parameters such as received power, distance between neighboring nodes and the link quality that is assessed using bit errors in a packet. The proposed scheme is simulated over a large number of MANET nodes with wide range of mobility and the performance is evaluated. Performance of the proposed scheme is compared with two well known mesh-based multicast routing protocols, i.e., on-demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP) and enhanced on-demand multicast routing protocol (EODMRP). It is observed that the proposed scheme produces better packet delivery ratio, reduced packet delay and reduced overheads (such as control, memory, computation, and message overheads).