A Multicast Routing Protocol adapted to the characteristics of Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

Wireless Mesh Networks are a wireless multi-hop networks in which the nodes are characterized by theirs stability. In this sort of network the minimum cost tree connects sources and receivers by implying a minimum number of forwarding nodes. This paper introduces an adaptation to the popular multicast protocol ODMRP (On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol) named OODMRP (Optimized On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol). The main effect of OODMRP is to minimize the number of forwarding nodes which leads to the optimization of resources consumption and the network congestion. Indeed, before selecting a forwarding node, each node looks in its neighborhood for the existence of a forwarding node. In this case, it selects this node as an ascending one in the multicast tree. Our simulation results show that OODMRP reduces dramatically the number of forwarding nodes and forwarded packets, compared to original ODMRP.