Scheduled-links multicast routing protocol in MANETs

Dynamically changing of network topology due to node movement is considered a main challenge in providing reliable and low-cost paths in one to many ends of communication in mobile ad hoc networks. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a scheduled-links multicast routing protocol (SLMRP) based on mobility prediction. SLMRP constructs multiple scheduled paths between multicast sources and receivers. SLMRP scheduled paths are subject to reliability and quality of service requirements in load-balance strategy. Multiple loop-free and node-disjoint paths are constructed for each source–receiver pair during route discovery process. To control the activation and deactivation of these paths, we introduce multicast routing activation timer (MRAT) and path timeout timer (PTT). MRAT and PTT are computed according to the route expiration time for the set of the discovering paths. Performance comparison results demonstrate that the proposed protocol outperforms PUMA, MAODV, and PMRP.