A comparative survey of multicast routing protocol in MANETs

The need for Mobil Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) in environments where there is a lack of communication infrastructure is so important. In some cases, existing infrastructure cannot work well to transfer the data between members, so MANET must be designed as a solution. MANETs are constructed by an independent group of mobile nodes that relate to each other without any base station or fixed infrastructure. Implementing multicast routing protocols to MANETs leads to improve the consumption of bandwidth, reducing the cost of communication in the network and improving the efficiency of communication links. MANETs have several mechanisms under several routing topologies. In this paper, we provide an overview of the most exiting multicast routing mechanisms especially in routing based on mesh and tree topology. In mobility environments the initialization and maintenance the multicast structure (tree or mesh) represents the main target of multicast routing protocols that lead to decrease the packet loss. The aim of this paper is to help the researchers in MANETs to develop the proper multicast routing protocols for their own environments.