A tree-based particle swarm optimization for multicast routing

QoS multicast routing is a non-linear combinatorial optimization problem. It tries to find a multicast routing tree with minimal cost that can satisfy constraints such as bandwidth, delay, and delay jitter. This problem is NP-complete. The solution to such problems is often to search first for paths from the source node to each destination node and then integrate these paths into a multicast tree. Such a method, however, is slow and complex. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose a new method for tree-based optimization. Our algorithm optimizes the multicast tree directly, unlike the conventional solutions to finding paths and integrating them to generate a multicast tree. Our algorithm also applies particle swarm optimization to the solution to control the optimization orientation of the tree shape. Simulation results show that our algorithm performs well in searching, converging speed and adaptability scale.