Multicast in MANET : Technologies and Implementation

Abstract

Multicast is a way of grouping receivers and optimizing bandwidth utilization. Introducing multicast in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) appears more challenging than providing multicast services in the fixed Internet, since multicast services designed for conventional (wired) networks may not be applicable to MANETs. Experiments have shown that in many MANET scenarios, simple broadcasting or flooding techniques can be a better choice than multicast, since the cost of building and maintaining a multicast tree may exhaust the benefit one can get from such a tree.

In this master thesis, the design and implementation of a multicast mechanism in MANETs that uses optimized flooding technique is presented. A set of experiments has been conducted based on the implemented testbed, for a standalone MANET, and some useful numerical results have been obtained. Furthermore, the thesis has proposed a solution to further provide multicast services to a MANET which is connected to an existing multicast network, e.g., the Multicast Backbone that is on the Internet.