Mobile ad hoc multicasting to support distributed virtual environments

Distributed virtual environment (DVE) applications such as interactive gaming and tele-immersion are becoming increasingly popular to use within mobile ad hoc networks. However, existing ad hoc multicasting protocols do not provide adequate support for DVE applications. This paper presents a novel multicasting protocol that provides a high level of support for the DVE. Our protocol, which is independent of the underlying unicasting routing infrastructure, uses a combined mesh and core approach. Multiple cores are selected and migrated according to the current conditions in the physical network and the virtual environment. An extensive performance evaluation of this approach shows that our technique is capable of effectively supporting large-scale DVE applications.