UNCLE: A unified unicast and multicast label forwarding architecture in MANETs

This paper presents a novel cross-layer forwarding scheme, called UNified unicast and multiCast LabEling (UNCLE), for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Unlike traditional unicast and multicast forwarding schemes requiring two different protocol stacks, the proposed UNCLE forwarding method requires only one single protocol stack, and thus avoid the need of distinguishing unicast frames from multicast frames. Furthermore, the header of the stateless UNCLE forwarding scheme is designed based on a simple modulo approach, resulting in much lower protocol overheads than the traditional stateless unicast Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and the Differential Destination Multicast (DDM) schemes. In addition to low forwarding latency the proposed UNCLE is very scalable for various network sizes and the multicast group sizes without table lookup in layers 2 and 3. Therefore, the UNCLE forwarding scheme can facilitate the deployment and management for providing both unicast and multicast services significantly.