Elsevier

Computer Networks

Volume 54, Issue 7, 17 May 2010, Pages 1183-1196
Computer Networks

Link stability based multicast routing scheme in MANET

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2009.11.005Get rights and content

Abstract

The group-oriented services are one of the primary application classes that are addressed by Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) in recent years. To support such services, multicast routing is used. Thus, there is a need to design stable and reliable multicast routing protocols for MANETs to ensure better packet delivery ratio, lower delays and reduced overheads. In this paper, we propose a mesh based multicast routing scheme that finds stable multicast path from source to receivers. The multicast mesh is constructed by using route request and route reply packets with the help of multicast routing information cache and link stability database maintained at every node. The stable paths are found based on selection of stable forwarding nodes that have high stability of link connectivity. The link stability is computed by using the parameters such as received power, distance between neighboring nodes and the link quality that is assessed using bit errors in a packet. The proposed scheme is simulated over a large number of MANET nodes with wide range of mobility and the performance is evaluated. Performance of the proposed scheme is compared with two well known mesh-based multicast routing protocols, i.e., on-demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP) and enhanced on-demand multicast routing protocol (EODMRP). It is observed that the proposed scheme produces better packet delivery ratio, reduced packet delay and reduced overheads (such as control, memory, computation, and message overheads).

Introduction

The characteristic of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is that they do not have fixed network infra-structure, i.e., every node in a MANET acts as both host and router. The nodes are mobile and have limited resources, transmission power and battery life. They have capability to self organize themselves to create a network. MANETs require fundamental changes to conventional routing protocols for both unicast and multicast communication in-spite of its unique features. With rapid requirement of group communication services, multicast routing in MANETs has attracted more attention recently [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. In multicast routing, a path is set up connecting all group members and packets are multicast to every receiver from a source in single transmission so that bandwidth is conserved. Group communication applications include audio/video conferencing as well as one-to-many data dissemination in critical situations such as disaster recovery or battlefield scenarios. Also, MANET applications are felt in mobile/wireless environments, where the mobility and topological changes produce high overheads and affect the throughput performance in terms of packet delivery ratio.

Since group-oriented communication is one of the key application classes in MANET environments, a number of MANET multicast routing protocols have been proposed. These protocols are classified according to two different criteria. The first criterion maintains routing state and classifies routing mechanisms into two types: proactive and reactive. Proactive protocols maintain routing state, while the reactive protocols reduce the impact of frequent topology changes by acquiring routes on demand. The second criterion classifies protocols according to the global data structure that is used to forward multicast packets. Existing protocols are either tree or mesh-based. Tree-based schemes establish a single path between any two nodes in the multicast group. These schemes require minimum number of copies per packet to be sent along the branches of the tree. Hence, they are bandwidth efficient. However, as mobility increases, link failures trigger the reconfiguration of entire tree. When there are many sources, network either has to maintain a shared tree, losing path optimality or maintain multiple trees resulting in storage and control overheads. Examples of tree-based schemes include [7], [8], [9]: ad hoc multicast routing protocol (AMRoute), ad hoc multicast routing utilizing increasing ID-numbers protocol (AMRIS), and multicast ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing protocol (MAODV).

Mesh-based schemes establish a mesh of paths that connect the sources and destinations. They are more resilient to link failures as well as to mobility. The major disadvantage is that mesh-based schemes introduce higher redundancy of packets since multiple copies of the same packet are disseminated through the mesh, resulting in reduced packet delivery and increased control overhead under high node mobility conditions. Some examples of mesh-based protocols include (a) on-demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP [10]), (b) forwarding group multicast protocol (FGMP [11]), (c) core assisted mesh protocol (CAMP [12]), (d) neighbor supporting ad hoc multicast routing protocol (NSMP [13]), (e) location-based multicast protocol [14], and (f) dynamic core-based multicast protocol (DCMP [15]).

In ODMRP, a source periodically floods an advertising packet in the network. Receiver responds to the packet by using backward learning. The nodes on the path from the receiver to the source form a mesh of forwarding nodes for the multicast group and thus ODMRP is one of the well established mesh-based protocols. The major advantage of ODMRP is that it produces high packet delivery ratio and throughput even under highly mobile network conditions because it reduces the overhead due to re-establishment of routes under a route failure condition as there is a mesh structure to provide back up path. The disadvantage of ODMRP is that the control overhead also grows higher and higher with network size. Similar process takes place when there is a link or node failures and mobility of nodes, since ODMRP does not support mobility. However, mobility is augmented as re-establishment of routes in ODMRP [16], [17], [24], [25].

Some of the proposals to overcome above listed disadvantages of ODMRP are: Enhanced ODMRP with Motion Adaptive Refresh (EODMRP) [26], Enhanced ODMRP Using Conditioned Broadcasting Algorithm [27], A Dynamic Counter-Based Forwarding Scheme for ODMRP (CODMRP) [28] and Resilient On Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (RODMRP) [29].

In this section, we discuss some of the related works on stable link based multicast routing protocols. The work given in [16] solves the problem of limiting control and data overhead for mesh-based multicast routing. It defines the mean link duration metric to adapt and reduce refreshing control packets and also suggests a new reactive multicast mesh construction algorithm with overhearing technique that forms a fish bone structure. Each mesh member chooses its forwarding node independently and entirely in a distributed fashion, based on its own perceived network conditions to provide a trade off between reducing data overhead and achieving multicast reliability. The work given in [4] proposes query packets containing source id, sequence number, next sequence number, hop count and the time interval needed to send next query packet. Query packet is sent by multiple sources and are processed by intermediate nodes and receivers.

In [18], a stable and delay constrained QoS routing protocol (SDCR) for MANET is proposed that makes routing decisions according to link state and dynamic delay detection. The end-to-end path stability is found using stable link mobility model, in which the protocol finds paths with higher link stability that are constrained by maximum delay, in the route discovery phase. A feasible path with longer lifetime is selected for data transfer. In the route maintenance phase, SDCR effectively keeps monitoring network topology changes by delay prediction mechanism and performs rerouting before the current path becomes unavailable and thus there is a significant improvement in routing performance that guarantees the requested QoS.

In [19], the received signal strength is continuously assessed based upon Newton interpolation polynomial, which selects middle values out of several sample values. The link lifetime is estimated with a mobility model, which proves independence of link lifetime on the relative movement direction and velocity of nodes. The sampling policy is derived with reference points calculated from Newton interpolation polynomial. Using this mechanism, the source nodes sets up route hop-by-hop to calculate the maximum link lifetime and proposes On-Demand Routing Protocol based on Link Duration Estimating (ODLE).

The work given in [20], proposes a routing algorithm called link failure prediction QoS routing (LFPQR) that predicts the future state of a node to decide whether the node is a good selection as a router or not, i.e., the downstream node decides whether the upstream node is a good candidate for selection as a router. The future prediction depends on the mobility and power level of a node. The protocol selects more stable paths and hence QoS requirements are satisfied.

In [21], Zhen et al. provide a partial multipath routing algorithm with the parallel packet redundancy mechanism in MANET, in which the link lifetime estimation predicts the lifetime of the links in the route establishment procedure without the aid of additional positioning equipments and extra control messages. The starting and ending nodes are set as relay nodes, which are responsible for sending the copies of some packets of the primary path to the secondary path and recording the sequence number of the forwarded packets. Parallel packet redundancy method has been employed to transmit packets along multipaths simultaneously, the relay nodes send out the redundant packets along secondary path after the redundancy threshold, which can compensate the packet loss and enhance the end-to-end path reliability.

EraMobile (Epidemic-based Reliable and Adaptive Multicast for Mobile ad hoc networks) is presented in [22] that supports group applications requiring high reliability. The protocol aims to deliver multicast data reliably with minimal network overhead under adverse network conditions such as dynamic and unpredictable topology changes due to mobility. Multicast routing is created without the help of traditional approaches such as maintenance of tree or mesh-like structures and global or partial view of the network and information about neighboring nodes/group members. It substantially lowers overhead by eliminating redundant data transmissions and it adapt to varying node densities delivering data reliably in both sparse networks (where network connectivity is prone to interruptions) and dense networks (where congestion is likely).

Ssua et al. in [23] present an efficient geographic multicast protocol using fermat points (GMFP). It improves the overall routing distance for multicasting. Authors show that GMFP outperforms the conventional Position-Based Multicast protocol in terms of the total routing distance, the packet transmission delay, the packet delivery ratio, and the node energy consumption. The performance improvements provided by GMFP are apparent as the scale of the network topology increases.

In [24], an on-demand multicast routing protocol named as source routing based multicast protocol (SRMP) is presented. This protocol constructs a mesh of paths to connect group members, providing robustness against mobility. It also provides stable paths based on link availability according to future prediction of links state, and higher battery life paths tending to power conserving. SRMP does not use periodic network flooding of control packets but instead, it constructs a stable mesh-based upon an estimate of future link availability and thus enhances battery life and minimizes the possibility of link failures and finally reduces the overhead needed to reconstruct the paths compared to ODMRP and ADMR protocols.

The work given in [30] by EffatParvar et al. proposes a cluster-based on-demand multicast routing protocol (SC-ODMRP) as an extension to the flat multicast routing protocols in large scale ad hoc networks using clustering concept on ODMRP to improve network performance in terms of end-to-end delay and control packets. The paper also proposes a link stability approach to design a stable multicast algorithm. This approach increases data delivery and decreases overhead. In [31], a cluster based stable multicast routing protocol (CBSRP) in ad hoc networks is proposed. The protocol uses flooding algorithm under extended range of some network conditions like higher mobility and enhanced traffic conditions. It constructs a new metric of node stability and selects a stable path with the help of entropy metric to reduce the number of route reconstruction. It selects nodes having higher weight factor to provide stability and thus the nodes act as cluster heads. Though the stable node selection increases the stability of nodes. However, after selection of cluster heads, the proactive maintenance of cluster heads is a major overhead and the overhead increases with number of nodes.

Enhanced ODMRP with Motion Adaptive Refresh (E-ODMRP) given in [26] presents an enhancement of ODMRP with refresh rate dynamically adapted to the environment. An additional enhancement is “unified” local recovery and receiver joining. On joining or upon detection of a broken route, a node performs an expanding ring search to graft to the forwarding mesh. Enhanced ODMRP (E-ODMRP) reduces overhead by up to 90% yet keeping similar packet delivery ratio compared to the original ODMRP. A conditioned broadcasting algorithm for on-demand multicast routing protocol is proposed in [27], which computes the rebroadcast probability of packets through neighbor node density with their relative distance and thus reduce the overhead. A Node that has the ability of achieving more coverage area and with low node density has a higher value of rebroadcast probability. ODMRP fueled with this algorithm is more efficient than original protocol in terms of packet delivery ratio, control byte overhead and end-to-end delay.

A Dynamic Counter-Based Forwarding Scheme for ODMRP (CODMRP) [28] attempts to improve packet delivery efficiency by minimizing the data redundancy as long as the packet delivery ratio of the protocol is comparable to a state of the ODMRP in the same conditions. In counter-based scheme, a counter maintained at receiver, records the number of times a same packet received is maintained by each host for each broadcast packet. When counter reaches a predefined threshold, the scheme inhibits the host from rebroadcasting this packet because the benefit (of additional coverage area) could be low. CODMRP combines the fixed counter-based approach with the distance-based approach. It dynamically adjusts the value of the counter threshold at the forward node according to the distance between itself and the packet sender. In addition, CODMRP provides a control over the redundancy in the mesh and does not need the support of positioning system (GPS) and neighbor information.

A thesis in [29] proposes a ODMRP based wireless multicast protocol (RODMRP) that offers more reliable forwarding paths in face of node failures and network failures. A subset of the nodes that are not on the forwarding paths rebroadcast the received packets to nodes in their neighborhoods to overcome perceived node failures. This rebroadcasting creates redundant forwarding paths to circumvent failed areas in the network. Each node makes this forwarding decision probabilistically.

In our previous work [32], a mesh-based multicast routing scheme is discussed which establishes a multicast mesh on-demand. The work is not supported with validation of the scheme and performance analysis and also lacked proper formulation of components of the scheme. This paper provides an extension to the work by providing detailed functioning of the scheme, examples and simulation based performance analysis.

As per the literature survey, it is observed that multicast protocols try to achieve better performance in terms of packet delivery ratio, reliability, less control overheads and packet delays. However, performance can be further improved by considering stable links during mobility conditions where stability is based upon the frequency of change in link quality. Without the stable links, the paths established are vulnerable due to large mobility patterns of nodes. Thus, there is a need to develop efficient link stability based multicast routing schemes that provides much better packet delivery ratio, delays and different types of overheads compared to existing multicast routing protocols. This paper attempts to provide such a solution.

In this paper, we propose a link stability based multicast routing scheme that establishes a route from a source to multicast destinations in MANET. A multicast mesh is created with stable links when a source node needs to send data to receiver nodes. The scheme consists of the following phases. (1) Mesh creation through the route request (RR) and route reply (RP) packets. (2) Finding stable routes between source and destination pair of nodes by selecting stable forwarding nodes (SFNs) using link stability metric. (3) Mesh maintenance to handle link failures.

Our contribution in this paper are as follows. (1) Defining RR and RP packets to create a mesh by using transmission power and antenna gains, (2) Defining a model of link quality using statistical measure of bit errors, (3) Creating and maintaining of routing information through every hop using RR and RP packets based on link stability, (4) Selecting SFN for multicast paths based on link stability which is computed using the parameters such as received power, distance between the nodes and link quality, (5) Selecting various SFN’s in a mesh during link failures rather than immediately attempting for route discovery, and (6) Comparing the performance of the proposed scheme with ODMRP and EODMRP. ODMRP and EODMRP are chosen for comparison since these protocols are well established and robust mesh-based protocols.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the proposed link stability based multicast routing scheme in MANET, in which the details of creating multicast mesh is discussed with the help of route request, route reply packets, multicast routing information cache and link stability database. Section 3 presents simulation environment comprising network model, channel model, mobility model and traffic model along with parameters used for simulation. Section 4 discusses simulation results and comparison with ODMRP and EODMRP. Finally, conclusions are given in Section 5.

Section snippets

Link stability based multicast routing

This section presents the functioning of proposed link stability based multicast routing scheme in MANET (LSMRM). Here, we discuss the process of creating a mesh of multicast routes with the help of RR and RP packets, routing information maintained in multicast routing information cache (MRIC) and link stability database (LSD). MRIC is maintained at every node. After creating a multicast mesh, stable route between source-destination pair is established using SFNs (which are a part of multicast

Simulation model

Proposed LSMRM has been simulated in various network scenarios to assess the performance and effectiveness of the approach. Simulation environment for the proposed work consists of four models: (1) Network model (2) Channel model (3) Mobility model, and (4) Traffic model. These models are discussed below.

  • Network model: An ad hoc network is generated in an area of lxb square meters. It consists of n number of mobile nodes that are placed randomly within a given area. The coverage area around

Results

In this section, we discuss the results obtained with proposed LSMRM. Six categories of results are analyzed: (1) Analysis of PDR, (2) Analysis of control overhead, (3) Analysis of memory overhead, (4) Analysis of computation overhead, (5) Analysis of message overhead and (6) Analysis of packet delays. Analysis is done in comparison with ODMRP and EODMRP.

Conclusions

In this paper, we proposed a stability based multicast routing scheme in MANET. The scheme finds multicast routes to receivers by using route request and route reply packets with the help of routing information maintained in MRIC and link stability parameters maintained in LSD on every node in a MANET. Multicast mesh of alternate paths between every source-destination pair is established in mesh creation phase. Stable path within a mesh is established by choosing an SFN that possess higher

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the reviewers and the editors for their valuable suggestions and comments that helped us to improve the quality of the paper.

Rajashekhar Biradar completed his B.E. (Electronics and Communication Engineering) and M.E. (Digital Electronics) from Karnataka University Dharwad, India. He is working as faculty in the Department of ECE, Reva Institute of Technology and Management, Bangalore, India. Currently, he is persuing his Ph.D. under Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), Belgaum, India. To his credit, he has 2 journal publications and 5 national/international conference publications. His research areas include

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    Rajashekhar Biradar completed his B.E. (Electronics and Communication Engineering) and M.E. (Digital Electronics) from Karnataka University Dharwad, India. He is working as faculty in the Department of ECE, Reva Institute of Technology and Management, Bangalore, India. Currently, he is persuing his Ph.D. under Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), Belgaum, India. To his credit, he has 2 journal publications and 5 national/international conference publications. His research areas include multicast routing in mobile ad hoc networks, wireless Internet, group communication in MANETs, agent technology. He is a member of IEEE (USA), member of IETE (MIETE, India), member of ISTE (MISTE, India), member of IE (MIE, India) and member of ACM.

    Sunilkumar Manvi received M.E. degree in Electronics from the University of Visweshwariah College of Engineering, Bangalore, Ph.D. degree in Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He is currently working as a Professor and Head of Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Reva Institute of Technology and Management, Bangalore, India. He is involved in research of Agent based applications in Multimedia Communications, Grid computing, Ad-hoc networks, E-commerce and Mobile computing. He has published 100 papers at national and international conferences and 32 papers for national and international journals. He is a Fellow IETE (FIETE, India), Fellow IE (FIE, India) and member ISTE (MISTE, India), member of IEEE (MIEEE, USA), He has been listed in Marqui’s Who’s Who in the World.

    Mylara Reddy completed his B.E. (Computer Science and Engineering) and M.E. (Computer Network Engineering) from Department of P.G. Studies, Visvesvaraya Technological University Karnataka, India. He is working as faculty in the Department of Information Science and Engineeing, Reva Institute of Technology and Management, Bangalore, India. He is a member ISTE (MISTE, India) and member of CSI (India).

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