Effective location-guided overlay multicast in mobile ad hoc networks

Purpose – Group communication has become increasing important in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). Current multicast routing protocols in MANET have been shown to incur large overheads due to dynamic network topology. To this end, this paper proposes an overlay multicast scheme in MANET that is more efficient. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is to construct an overlay multicast tree based on the locations of the group nodes. The paper proposes several tree construction algorithms, namely, locationguided kary (LGK) tree, locationguided directional (LGD) tree and locationguided Steiner (LGS) tree. All of them rely on the geometric locations of the nodes as heuristics to construct the tree. The paper also introduces several mechanisms to enhance the proposed algorithms. Findings – The simulation results show that the locationguided heuristics is very effective in constructing low bandwidth cost overlay multicast trees in MANET. When location information is uptodate, the bandwidth cost of a LGS tree is similar to that of an optimal routerassisted Steiner multicast tree. When location information is outdated, LGD tree has the lowest cost. Originality/value – This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of locationguided heuristics in constructing overlay multicast trees in MANET. This study strongly suggests that locationguided heuristics can be used to design many other algorithms in a mobile network.