Distributed Wireless Links Repair for Maximizing Reliability and Utilization in Multicast MANET

For achieving multicast routing in self-organizing wireless on demand networks, the multicast ad hoc on-demand distance vector (MAODV) routing protocol is proposed. In MAODV, a multicast tree is created when a sender wants to send packets to several receivers in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In such ad hoc networks, wireless links may be lost occasionally due to mobile nodes on the multicast tree that are unreachable, which causes broken branches, low network reliability, and low packet delivery rate. For overcoming the problem MAODV provides a simple local repair mechanism that tries to find an alternative route to a tree by broadcasting the RREQ message from the downstream nodes of the broken link, but results in extensive control messages and obvious low successful repair rate. Therefore, in this paper we propose a unicast-type multihop local repair protocol in multicasting MANET to recover lost links efficiently while increasing network reliability, minimizing the number of control messages, and reducing repair delay. Meanwhile, the optimal number of hops of neighbor table is also analyzed. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed multihop local repair approach outperforms other repair approaches in successful repair rate and control message overhead.