An efficient multi-source multicast routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks are organized by a collection of wireless devices. Any pre-established wired or wireless infrastructure or centralized administration is unnecessary. Thus, ad hoc wireless networks are particularly useful in regions such as battle-fields or disaster areas. There are numerous applications, such as video conferencing, distance learning and video on-demand relay on multicast routing. Most existing multicast routing protocols in ad hoc networks consider only one source in a multicast group, resulting in large overhead when the system is extended to multi-source multicasting. In this paper, we propose a cluster-based multi-source multicast routing protocol to provide efficient multicasting in the multi-source multicast environment. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol generates low overhead without dropping the delivery ratio in the multi-source multicast environment.