MC-TRACE: multicasting through time reservation using adaptive control for energy efficiency

In this paper, we present multicasting through time reservation using adaptive control for energy efficiency (MC-TRACE), which is an energy-efficient voice multicasting architecture for mobile ad hoc networks. MC-TRACE is a monolithic design, where the medium access control layer functionality and network layer functionality are performed by a single integrated layer. The basic design philosophy behind the networking part of the architecture is to establish and maintain a multicast tree within a mobile ad hoc network using broadcasting to establish the desired tree branches and pruning the redundant branches of the multicast tree based on feedback obtained from the multicast leaf nodes. Energy efficiency of the architecture is partially due to the medium access part, where the nodes can switch to sleep mode frequently; and partially due to the network layer part where the number of redundant data retransmissions and receptions are mostly eliminated. Furthermore, MC-TRACE achieves high spatial reuse efficiency by keeping the number of nodes taking part in multicasting operation minimal. We evaluated the performance of MC-TRACE through ns simulations and compared with flooding. Our results show that packet delivery ratio performance, energy efficiency and spatial reuse efficiency of MC-TRACE is superior to those of flooding