Cored-Based Tree with Forwarding Regions (CBT-FR); A Protocol for Reliable Multicasting in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper we propose a new protocol for reliable multicast in a multihop mobile radio network. The protocol is reliable, i.e., it guarantees message delivery to all multicast nodes even when the topology of the network changes during multicasting. The proposed protocol uses a core-based shared tree. The multicast tree may get fragmented due to node movements. The notion of a forwarding region is introduced which is used to glue together fragments of multicast trees. The gluing process involves flooding the forwarding region of only those nodes that witness topology change due to node mobility. Delivery of multicast messages to mobile nodes is expedited through (i) pushing the message by witness nodes in their forwarding regions and (ii) pulling messages by a mobile node during (re)joining process. Hence, the protocol conserves network bandwidth by using a combination of the push–pull approach and by restricting flooding only to the essential parts of the network that are affected by topology change.  We develop a theoretical model to compute the probability of packet loss (as a function of the mobility rate) for our proposed scheme compared to the the core-based tree protocol (CBT); we also evaluate the effectiveness of forwarding regions as compared to traditional flooding. Our analysis shows that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms CBT.