Development of the multicast flow oriented routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

This research project is geared towards the implementation of a multicast routing protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). MANET nodes operate on a limited battery power and move freely within a dynamically created network. Due to autonomous node movement and limited transmission range, nodes frequently reconfigure links between neighboring nodes making it imperative those nodes know there position in relation to other nodes in the network. The frequent changes in connectivity between nodes can cause various problems such as unwanted battery usage due to large amounts of information overhead and the loss of information during transmissions. In an effort to find the best routing protocol to cut down on route discovery overhead, this research involves the development of a stable multicast routing protocol based on the Flow-Oriented Routing Protocol (FORP), one of the best stable path unicast routing protocol. The developed protocol will be called M-FORP. Simulations of M-FORP will be conducted under different conditions of node mobility and density. We will also compare the performance of M-FORP with a couple of other routing protocols such as node velocity-based stable path (NVSP) and Bandwidth Efficient Multicast Routing Protocol (BEMRP). The results will be used to determine which routing protocol would be most efficient in solving the excess information overhead problem.