Local Retransmission-Based Gossip Protocol in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The node mobility makes it difficult to guarantee a high reliability of data delivery for existing multicast routing protocols, but it is a major concern in protocol design for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs). We propose a novel scalable and reliable multicast protocol based on clustering technique and gossip methodology. Local retransmission and gossip-based mechanisms (LRG) are combined to provide the high reliability of data delivery. Dynamical changes of gossip probability and gossip scope upgrade the spreading ratio of messages and they make the protocol adaptive to the rapid changes of network environment. The proposed protocol is compared with the well-known route driven gossip (RDG) protocol with regard to communication overhead, reliability, and latency. Theoretical analysis and simulation studies show that LRG is reliable and scalable in MANETs.