A multicast protocol for mobile adhoc networks

An adhoc network is a collection of wireless, mobile nodes, dynamically forming a temporary network without the use of any existing infrastructure or centralized administration. A variety of new, unicast, routing protocols targeted at this environment have been developed, but, in the case of multicast routing protocols, there has been very little development. The paper considers the problem of multicast routing in adhoc networks. We propose a new protocol for multicast routing. This protocol offers quick adaptation to dynamic link conditions and low processing and memory overhead as well as low network utilization. It creates bidirectional shared multicast trees connecting multicast sources and destinations. These multicast trees are maintained as long as group members exist within the connected portion of the network.