A hybrid overlay multicast routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

We propose a novel multicast routing protocol, called hybrid overlay multicast routing protocol (HOMRP) for MANETs (mobile ad hoc networks). Existing overlay and mesh multicast routing protocols in MANETs have the main drawback of low packet delivery ratio and high control overhead, respectively. In order to improve these shortcomings, we integrate multicasting and unicast tunnels for efficient packet delivery. In HOMRP, it creates multiple local multicast trees. Each pair of parent node and child node in a local multicast tree is at a distance of one-hop. It uses multicasting to deliver multicast packets in local multicast trees. This provide efficient data forwarding. Unicast tunnels are used for transmitting packets between local multicast trees. Simulation results have shown that the packet delivery ratio of HOMRP is 50% better than that of AMRoute and is close to that of ODMRP. HOMRP reduces 18% control overhead compared to ODMRP and reduces 9% end-to-end packet delay compared to AMRoute.