Distributed multicast routing for delay and delay variation-bounded Steiner tree using simulated annealing

The delay and delay variation-bounded Steiner tree problem is an important multicast routing issue in real-time multimedia networks. Such a constrained Steiner tree problem is known to be NP-complete. In this paper, we propose a distributed multicast routing algorithm based on simulated annealing to produce routing trees having a minimal network cost under delay and delay variation constraints. The proposed algorithm is fully distributed, and supports the dynamic reorganizing of the multicast tree in response to changes for the destination. Simulations demonstrate that our algorithm is better in terms of tree cost as compared with other existing algorithms, and it performs excellently in delay and delay variation. Furthermore, it has high success ratio, rapid convergence and better real-time property.