Thesis (M.S.)--King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Saudi Arabia), 2001
Ad hoc networks are dynamically reconfigurable wireless networks with no fixed infrastructure or central administration. Applications such as disaster recovery, crowd control, etc., are practical applications for these networks. Such applications are group oriented in nature with high QoS demands, which means an efficient multicast routing protocol is very important. Multicast routing protocols for wired networks are not suitable in this environment, since ad hoc networks consist of severely limited bandwidth links and low power hand held devices. In this work we are proposing a new approach for multicast routing in mobile ad hoc networks. The scheme follows the on-demand forwarding group approach, and occasionally utilizes limited flooding. It utilizes global control messages sent by the source node to refresh the multicast group members and route information, as well as local beacon messages sent by all forwarding nodes to determine the current mobility state of their downstream nodes. These beacon messages are used by forwarding nodes to detect when downstream nodes move out of their transmission range, and therefore switch to scoped flooding
