QoS multicast routing protocol in hierarchical wireless MANET

A wireless MANET is a self-configurable network in which mobile, battery-powered devices dynamically create and change the network topology without relying on any intrastructure or administrative support. It offers unique benefits for certain environments, but there are still several open issues to be resolved before realizing these benefits, including QoS routing, multicasting, and mobility management. Specifically, an efficient QoS multicast routing protocol is needed. This paper presents a hierarchical QoS multicast routing protocol (QMRP) for mobile ad hoc networks. It can provide QoS-sensitive routes in a scalable and flexible way, in the network environment with mobility. In the proposed QMRP scheme, each local node only needs to maintain local multicast routing information and/or summary information of other clusters (or domains) but does not require any global ad hoc network states to be maintained. The QMRP also allows any ad hoc group member to join/leave the multicast group dynamically and supports multiple QoS constraints. This paper presents formal description and main procedures for realizing routing decision process of the QMRP and the proof of correctness and complexity analysis of the protocol. The performance measures of QMRP are evaluated using simulation. The simulation results verify the efficiency and availability of QMRP.