Research and survey on multicast routing protocols for MANETs

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are self-configuring, de-centralized and a kind of multi hop wireless packet networks, where the mobile gadgets (also referred to as nodes) communicate with each other on wireless links. Such networks find applications where a quick deployment or dynamic reconfiguration of network is required, or there is no pre-existing network infrastructure or wired network is available. The applications include emergency search and rescue operations, military, civilian operations, law enforcement, and conferences. Multicasting is becoming important in MANETs as a lot of applications relaying on cooperation among a team. There have been a wide variety of multicast routing protocols available in the literature. This paper outlines the multicasting, various multicast routing protocols and their performance evaluation metrics.