DREAM : Density Aware Overlay Multicast Forwarding in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Instead of multicast functionality on a network entity, the overlay multicast schemes support multicast service with help of underlying unicast routing protocol. However, due to a node's free migration and communication based on broadcasting capability, effectiveness of overlay multicast scheme is not guaranteed in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET). Specially, nodes' density within some areas changes frequently so heterogeneous forwarding scheme based on density is strongly desired in order to reduce a number of collisions as well as enhance resource utilization. To achieve this, in this paper, we introduce a new forwarding scheme, called as DREAM (Density aware overlay Multicast forwarding). A key feature of DREAM is to introduce a scoped flooding where the nodes densely locates, on the other hand, data forwarding based on unicast routing protocol is maintained in sparse environment. Distinct advantages are evaluated by simulation. Ki-Il Kim received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea, in 2002 and 2005, respectively. He is currently with Department of Information Science, Gyeongsang National University as a faculty member. His research interests include routing for MANET, QoS in wireless network, multicast, and sensor networks. Sang-Ha Kim received the B.S. degree in chemistry from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1980. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in quantum scattering and computer science from the University of Houston, Houston, TX, in 1984 and 1989, respectively. From 1990 to 1991, he was with the Supercomputing Center, SERI, Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) as Senior Researcher. He joined Chungnam National University, Daejeon,Korea, in 1992, where he is a Professor. His current research interests include wireless networks, ad hoc networks, QoS, optical networks, and network analysis.