Multicasting protocols for ad hod networks

The advances in portable computing and wireless technologies are opening up exciting possibilities for the future of wireless mobile networking. A Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming dynamical and temporary network without the use of any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. Its capability of providing rapidly deployable communication makes it an ideal choice for consumer, company and public uses. Most applications are characterized by a close degree of collaboration. Multicasting could prove to be an efficient way of providing necessary services for these kinds of applications. However, due to the limited transmission range of wireless network interfaces, multiple network hops may be needed for one node to exchange data with another one across the network. Consequently, the extra challenges such as frequent topology change and limited network resources are introduced in multicasting protocol design. In this dissertation, we first examine different techniques and strategies, which are used by current multicast routing protocols for MANETs. Then, we present our proposition, multicast routing protocol with dynamic core (MRDC), to provide best effort multicast routing. This protocol addresses the issue of how to optimize packet delivery success rate and overhead. This protocol gives a trade-off between forwarding overhead and routing overhead but also an optimization between delivery success rate and overhead regarding application requirement and network situation. For the applications, which require 100% percent packet delivery, we study a reliable multicasting protocol that activates intermediate nodes to assist retransmission. All these works have the same goal: optimize packet delivery ratio and overhead to satisfy application requirement with good utilization of network resources especially bandwidth. This dissertation also includes our experiences in implementing a mobile ad hoc testbed. We developed this testbed by implementation of DDR, a unicast routing protocol and MRDC so that the testbed can support both one-to-one communications and many-to-many communications. This testbed will allow us to analyze the performance of routing protocols in real network. It can also be used to study protocols and new MANET applications. The advances in portable computing and wireless technologies are opening up exciting possibilities for the future of wireless mobile networking. A Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming dynamical and temporary network without the use of any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. Its capability of providing rapidly deployable communication makes it an ideal choice for consumer, company and public uses. Most applications are characterized by a close degree of collaboration. Multicasting could prove to be an efficient way of providing necessary services for these kinds of applications. However, due to the limited transmission range of wireless network interfaces, multiple network hops may be needed for one node to exchange data with another one across the network. Consequently, the extra challenges such as frequent topology change and limited network resources are introduced in multicasting protocol design. In this dissertation, we first examine different techniques and strategies, which are used by current multicast routing protocols for MANETs. Then, we present our proposition, multicast routing protocol with dynamic core (MRDC), to provide best effort multicast routing. This protocol addresses the issue of how to optimize packet delivery success rate and overhead. This protocol gives a trade-off between forwarding overhead and routing overhead but also an optimization between delivery success rate and overhead regarding application requirement and network situation. For the applications, which require 100% percent packet delivery, we study a reliable multicasting protocol that activates intermediate nodes to assist retransmission. All these works have the same goal: optimize packet delivery ratio and overhead to satisfy application requirement with good utilization of network resources especially bandwidth. This dissertation also includes our experiences in implementing a mobile ad hoc testbed. We developed this testbed by implementation of DDR, a unicast routing protocol and MRDC so that the testbed can support both one-to-one communications and many-to-many communications. This testbed will allow us to analyze the performance of routing protocols in real network. It can also be used to study protocols and new MANET applications. The advances in portable computing and wireless technologies are opening up exciting possibilities for the future of wireless mobile networking. A Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming dynamical and temporary network without the use of any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. Its capability of providing rapidly deployable communication makes it an ideal choice for consumer, company and public uses. Most applications are characterized by a close degree of collaboration. Multicasting could prove to be an efficient way of providing necessary services for these kinds of applications. However, due to the limited transmission range of wireless network interfaces, multiple network hops may be needed for one node to exchange data with another one across the network. Consequently, the extra challenges such as frequent topology change and limited network resources are introduced in multicasting protocol design. In this dissertation, we first examine different techniques and strategies, which are used by current multicast routing protocols for MANETs. Then, we present our proposition, multicast routing protocol with dynamic core (MRDC), to provide best effort multicast routing. This protocol addresses the issue of how to optimize packet delivery success rate and overhead. This protocol gives a trade-off between forwarding overhead and routing overhead but also an optimization between delivery success rate and overhead regarding application requirement and network situation. For the applications, which require 100% percent packet delivery, we study a reliable multicasting protocol that activates intermediate nodes to assist retransmission. All these works have the same goal: optimize packet delivery ratio and overhead to satisfy application requirement with good utilization of network resources especially bandwidth. This dissertation also includes our experiences in implementing a mobile ad hoc testbed. We developed this testbed by implementation of DDR, a unicast routing protocol and MRDC so that the testbed can support both one-to-one communications and many-to-many communications. This testbed will allow us to analyze the performance of routing protocols in real network. It can also be used to study protocols and new MANET applications.