A Load-Balanced Multicast Protocol for Complete Exchange on Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Abstract

The paper presents an on-demand multicast protocol, load-balanced complete-exchange multicasting (LCM), in which all multicast group members can exchange data amongst themselves. Based on the passive clustering technique, LCM adopts a cluster structure to provide multicasting and, thus, reduces a large amount of control packets flooding all over the network. Instead of constructing a shared cluster structure, each multicast group member in LCM will on-demand construct its own cluster structure to balance the traffic loads, and further avoid overloading the mobile nodes or on-route traffic congestion. Simulation results show that LCM has a higher packet delivery ratio and throughput than the existing methods while the number of multicast group members is large under the dense network. Additionally, LCM can also greatly decrease the number of control packets during route discovery and increase the efficiency of the network.