Cross Layer Ad hoc Multiple channel Multicasting Protocol

Capacity improvement is one of the major challenges in the design of mobile ad hoc networks. Use of multiple channels is a useful technique in order to achieve capacity improvement by allowing nodes that need to exchange data to operate on the same channel and nodes that do not need to exchange data to operate on different channels. In the recent past some research has been done in the area of improving channel capacity using multiple channels for unicast flows. However we are not aware of any prior work for improving the channel capacity for multicast flows. We present the cross layer ad hoc multiple channel multicasting protocol (CLAMMP) for mobile ad hoc networks (MANET's). CLAMMP is the first protocol for MANET's which uses multiple channels to increase capacity for multicasting flows. CLAMMP is a cross-layered protocol in the sense that it traverses both the routing as well as the MAC layers. Using simulations in Qualnet 3.5, we compare CLAMMP with PUMA (tree-mode) and ODMRP, which are representatives of mesh-based and tree-based multicast routing in ad hoc networks. The results from a wide range of scenarios show that CLAMMP improves network capacity by an order of magnitude compared to the other two protocols