A new multicast routing protocol based on autonomous clustering in ad hoc networks

This paper discusses multicast routing in ad hoc networks. The multicast routing is defined as routing such that the same message is delivered from a node to a set of more than one node called multicast group. Since nodes move around in the ad hoc networks and members join and leaves from the multicast group, it is difficult to manage the multicast group and to maintain routes along which the same message is delivered to the multicast group. We have proposed an autonomous and adaptive clustering scheme to keep sets of connected nodes as clusters. In order to cope with the difficulties mentioned above, this paper proposes a new hierarchical multicast routing protocol to which the autonomous and adaptive clustering is applied in ad hoc networks. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol is effective from the viewpoint of the numbers of control packets and delivered data packets in comparison with a typical core-based multicast routing protocol MAODV.