Distributed Steiner-Like Multicast Path Setup for Mesh-based Multicast Routing in Ad Hoc Networks

In most multicast routing protocols for ad hoc networks, the problem of connecting a group of receivers to the source has been approximated using the polynomial shortest path heuristic because of its simplicity. The main goal for multicasting is to achieve better bandwidth utilization when group communication is most likely to take place in the network. However, the shortest path heuristic does not setup an optimal multicast delivery infrastructure in terms of bandwidth consumption. In this paper, we propose a multicast path setup algorithm based on Steiner-trees. Our proposed bandwidth-optimized and delay-sensitive (BODS) algorithm constructs a multicast delivery mesh based on nearest participant heuristic without sacrificing delay performance. Being a multicast path setup algorithm, BODS is a general algorithm that can be integrated into any existing mesh-based multicast routing protocols. We integrated BODS into the on demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP) and evaluated the performance of the enhanced ODMRP. The simulation results revealed that the enhanced ODMRP achieved a similar or better delivery ratio as original ODMRP with a reduction of around 30% data overhead