A scalability comparison of GST and SST MANET multicast routing algorithms

Since network resource of mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is limited due to the contention-based wireless communication channel at the medium access layer and energy of mobile nodes is constrained due to the energy-limited batteries, the scalability issue is one of main research topics in developing MANET routing algorithms. Therefore, this paper analyzes the message complexities of group shared tree (GST) and source-specific tree (SST) that are implemented in most MANET multicast routing algorithms. Simulation demonstrates that in a wireless ad hoc network where SST and GST are well maintained during the simulation, SST algorithm is able to achieve very competitive performance (i.e. less message complexity) under the multiple packet transmissions, in comparison with GST where no core selection algorithm is adopted.