E-ODMRP: Enhanced ODMRP with motion adaptive refresh

On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP) is a multicast routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks. Its efficiency, simplicity, and robustness to mobility render it one of the most widely used MANET multicast protocols. At the heart of the ODMRP’s robustness is the periodic route refreshing. ODMRP rebuilds the data forwarding “mesh” on a fixed interval and thus the route refresh interval is a key parameter that has critical impact on the network performance. If the route refresh rate is too high, the network will undergo too much routing overhead, wasting valuable resources. If it is too low, ODMRP cannot keep up with network dynamics, resulting in packet losses due to route breakages. In this paper, we present an enhancement of ODMRP with the refresh rate dynamically adapted to the environment. Simulation results show that the Enhanced ODMRP (E-ODMRP) reduces the packet overhead by up to a half yet keeping a packet delivery ratio comparable to that of the original ODMRP. E-ODMRP compares favorably with other published multicast schemes.