Scalable Multicasting in Energy Aware Mobile Backbone Based Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

The synthesis of efficient and scalable multicasting schemes for wireless ad hoc networks is a challenging task. In this paper, we present two multicast algorithms that employ a dynamically synthesized energy-aware mobile backbone network (E-MBN) to achieve efficient message distribution among members of the multicast groups: (1) Bnet flooding multicast algorithm (BFMA); and (2) Shared backbone multicast subnetwork (SBMS). E-MBN incorporates a power saving mechanism that allows inactive nodes to transition into sleep state to conserve energy, and elects nodes with higher energy reserves as backbone nodes to extend network lifetime. For fair comparison, we defined and implemented an extended version of ODMRP with power saving mechanism (ODMRP-PS). We study the throughput (per-watt) performance efficiency of the E-MBN based multicast algorithms through analytical and simulation evaluations, and demonstrate the enhanced performance achieved by these algorithms when compared to ODMRP-PS