Reducing data-overhead of mesh-based ad hoc multicast routing protocols by Steiner tree meshes

We study the problem of reducing data overhead of mesh-based multicast ad hoc routing protocols by reducing the number of forwarding nodes. We show that minimizing the number of forwarding nodes is equivalent to the problem of finding the minimal cost multicast tree. In addition, we demonstrate the problem to be NP-complete by a transformation to the Steiner tree problem. We propose a distributed heuristic algorithm based on the epidemic propagation of the number of forwarding nodes. Our simulation results show that the proposed heuristic, when implemented into ODMRP, is able to offer similar performance results and a lower average latency while improving the forwarding efficiency in around a 40-50% with respect to the original ODMRP.