PRIME: An Interest-Driven Approach to Integrated Unicast and Multicast Routing in MANETs

A framework for integrated multicast and unicast routing in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is introduced. It is based on interest-defined mesh enclaves that are connected components of a MANET spanning the sources and receivers of unicast or multicast flows. The Protocol for Routing in Interest-defined Mesh Enclaves (PRIME) is presented to implement the proposed framework for integrated routing in MANETs. PRIME establishes meshes that are activated and deactivated by the presence or absence of interest in individual destination nodes and groups and confines most of the signaling overhead within regions of interest (enclaves) in such meshes. The routes established in PRIME are shown to be free of permanent loops. Experimental results based on extensive simulations show that PRIME attains similar or better data delivery and end-to-end delays than traditional unicast and multicast routing schemes for MANETs (AODV, OLSR, ODMRP). The experiments also show that signaling in PRIME is far more scalable than the one used by traditional multicast and unicast routing protocols such as AODV, OLSR, or ODMRP.