CLUSTER-BASED MANET MULTICAST ROUTING SCHEME

Ad hoc network is a dynamic multihop wireless network that is established by a group of mobile nodes using a shared wireless channel. The key barrier is routing in ad hoc networks does not scale up as easily as in fixed network. This problem can be effectively tackled by bringing in hierarchical routing schemes in ad hoc networks. Clustering provides a method to build and maintain hierarchical routing scheme in ad hoc networks. This paper proposes a fully distributed cluster-based routing algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks. Non-overlapping clusters are formed using the dynamic cluster creation algorithm. The mobility issues are also handled locally in this routing architecture. The proposed cluster maintenance algorithm dynamically adapts to the topology changes and hence efficiency is not degraded by node mobility. In addition, our analysis shows that cluster-based routing scheme is cost-effective and can also be used for providing quality of service support to ad hoc network. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]