An efficient and message-optimal multicast routing protocol in mobile ad-hoc networks

This paper presents a novel protocol for multicasting in mobile ad-hoc networks named Spanning Tree for Multicasting (STM), which establishes and maintains the spanning tree for each multicast group using optimal control packets, without requiring any underlying unicast routing protocol or any pre-configured state of group. Based on the original idea of optimal maintenance of a spanning tree (OMST), we improve this algorithm considerably and propose our multicast protocol, as well as implement it as an extension of simulator NS-2. We compare STM with MAODV and PUMA using NS-2 through various scenarios, the results show that STM attains top packet delivery ratio, while keeping less overhead than others. As far as we know, our implementation is the very first implementation inspired by OMST in practice.