Fuzzy Agent Based Quality of Service Multicast Routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Network

Multicast routing can be used to save the bandwidth and energy while transmitting same data packets to multiple receivers as well as to support real time multimedia applications for users of a Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET). Multicast routing with Quality of Service (QoS) requirements like bandwidth, end-to-end delay, jitter and energy could provide efficient services in multimedia applications. This paper proposes an on-demand fuzzy logic agent based multicast routing scheme in MANETs that provides the desired QoS for users in group communication. A set of agents are used to operate in the following sequence: (1) creation of a QoS multicast mesh network, where identification of QoS nodes in the mesh is based on parameters like speed, residual power of node, and delay between two nodes by using fuzzy inference system, (2) a path to route the packets to receivers is selected from a QoS mesh, (3) mobile agents are employed to maintain QoS path when path breaks due to mobility of node or link failure and also to facilitate the nodes to join or leave the group. To test the performance effectiveness of the approach, we have analyzed the performance parameters like packet delivery ratio, control overhead and QoS satisfied paths. The scheme operates better than ODMRP (On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol).