A reactive protocol for multicast in cognitive radio network

Multicasting is used to send data to multiple destinations at the same time using single transmission. It has been broadly deployed in various wireless networks. Yet, it has not been explored much in cognitive radio networks. This article presents a multicasting protocol where channel allocation to the secondary users (SUs) is performed along with the route discovery. To setup a multicast route, the control message is broadcasted to all the neighbors on multiple available channels. The proposed protocol uses an approach during route establishment so that all the neighbors receive control messages however, with limited channels. The performance evaluation is conducted using NS2 simulator (CRCN patch). Our protocol performs better than other popular protocols for ad hoc networks.