A survey of multicast routing protocols for mobile Ad-Hoc networks

A Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) is composed of Mobile Nodes (MNs) without any infrastructure. MNs selforganize to form a network over radio links. In this environment, multicast routing protocols are faced with the challenge of producing multi-hop routing under host mobility and bandwidth constraint. Multicast routing plays a significant role in MANETs. In recent years, various multicast routing protocols with distinguishing feature have been newly proposed. In order to provide a comprehensive understanding of these multicast routing protocols designed for MANETs and pave the way for the further research, a survey of the multicast routing protocols is discussed in detail in this paper. Qualitatively, based on their primary multicast routing selection principle, we show that all these protocols could be placed under one of two broad routing selection categories: multicast routing based on application independence and multicast routing based on application dependence.