Survey of reliable and efficient MAC layer multicast protocols in MANETs

It is a demand of many applications for networks to support multicast. These applications, for instance, can be audio/video conferences, distributed simulation, multi-user games, distributed databases. The broadcast characteristics of wireless channels bring the huge challenge for providing multicast in wireless Ad Hoc networks. Especially, it is impossible to provide multicast/broadcast with quality in application layers without reliable MAC layer multicast. In this paper, the problems of IEEE 802.11 like protocols for providing multicast are analyzed. The solutions and protocols of reliable MAC layer multicast in wireless Ad Hoc networks are surveyed. Finally, the comparison and future open issues are discussed.