DREAM: Density aware overlay Multicast forwarding in mobile ad hoc networks

Instead of multicast functionality on a network entity, the overlay multicast schemes support multicast service with help of underlying unicast routing protocol. However, due to a node's free migration and communication based on broadcasting capability, effectiveness of overlay multicast scheme is not guaranteed in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET). Specially, nodes' density within some areas changes frequently so heterogeneous forwarding scheme based on density is strongly desired in order to reduce a number of collisions as well as enhance resource utilization. To achieve this, in this paper, we introduce a new forwarding scheme, called as DREAM (Density aware overlay Multicast forwarding). A key feature of DREAM is to introduce a scoped flooding where the nodes densely locates, on the other hand, data forwarding based on unicast routing protocol is maintained in sparse environment. Distinct advantages are evaluated by simulation.