Scalable multicast communications for ad hoc extensions attached to IP mobile networks

To date, IP multicast for fixed and mobile networks has been considered as two separate problems; however, within the framework of the MIND IST project, we are providing an integrated multicast architecture suited for both types of network. This paper presents the MIND multicast architecture for "beyond 3G" mobile and wireless networks including ad hoc extensions. A comparative study is presented which demonstrates that an efficient architecture is even more important than the protocols used. In addition, it is demonstrated that the MIND multicast architecture is potentially more efficient than that of UMTS and could offer the same theoretical bandwidth savings that native IP multicast achieves in fixed networks.