A receiver initiated mesh based multicasting for MANETs using ACO

Recent development has a tremendous growth in the ad-hoc wireless networks. Ad-hoc wireless networks are dynamic topology networks organized by a collection of mobile nodes that utilize multi-hop radio relaying and are capable of operating without the support of any fixed infrastructure. Ad-hoc wireless networks are very useful in emergency operations, collaborative and distributed computing and military applications. Multicasting plays an important role in the ad-hoc wireless networks, where nodes form groups to carry out certain tasks that require point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-multipoint voice and data communication. The biggest challenge in the ad-hoc wireless networks is to find an optimized path between the two nodes. In this paper, we present an ant colony based multicast routing protocol for ad-hoc wireless networks, in that we analyzed the performance of proposed algorithm next to on-demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP). This proposed approach maps the solution capability of swarm intelligence to mathematical and engineering problems. The performance of these protocols have been examined and analyzed under realistic scenarios using NS-2.