MQBM: An autonomic QoS multicast routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a wireless network that consists of a large number of mobile and heterogeneous nodes interconnected by wireless links which move in an arbitrary direction with random velocity. It is characterized by the absence of any pre-existing infrastructure. This makes the transmission more difficult especially, in the case of multicast mode. Some of the most important applications that use the MANETs are the multimedia and real time systems. They require a very high level of quality of service (QoS) to make the network useful. In this paper, we propose a new QoS multicast routing protocol called MQBM for MANETs inspired by the bees´ communication. It allows finding routes between the source and the head of multicast group responsible to communicate the packet toward the group members. Each node is allowed to transmit data only if the average end-to-end delay and the average bandwidth satisfy the QoS requirements. Extensive simulation results obtained using NS2 simulator, demonstrate the efficiency and the performance of the proposed protocol after comparisons against MAODV in terms of the average end-to-end delay and the average bandwidth as QoS metrics.