Maximising resource utilisation and load balancing in MANET multicasting with ODMRP over cluster-based topologies

This paper presents a new cluster-based route discovery method for On Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP) intended for efficient and reliable multicasting over cluster-based topologies of Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs). The proposed method uses a combination of a number of cluster-related ideas available in the literature and a novel technique of using secondary cluster-heads proposed in this paper. Secondary cluster-heads offer load balancing which is aimed at providing reliable multicast services. The proposed method was tested by a computer simulation conducted in GloMoSim and the results show that the method is capable of accomplishing its goals by requiring only about 50% of the network resources needed by the blind flooding method of ODMRP. © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.