MRBL: An Efficient Multicast Routing Protocol with Backup Labeling in MANETs

The mobile devices in resource-constrained mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) usually communicate with each other without going through base stations. When the communication between mobile devices gets complicated due to fast changing technical developments and increased mobile devices, how to maintain transmission paths efficiently in order to elevate the network performance becomes a critical issue. To this purpose, this paper presents an advanced tree-based multicast routing protocol which uses an improved label mechanism to maintain the topology and multicast groups of a MANET, and uses the built backup paths to secure better transmission stability. Simulation results show that, with slightly more control overhead, the new routing protocol is able to yield constantly higher delivery ratios vs. increased data flow, when compared with other multicast routing protocols.