EraMobile: Epidemic-based reliable and adaptive multicast for MANETs

We present a novel protocol EraMobile (Epidemic-based Reliable and Adaptive Multicast for Mobile ad hoc networks) and its performance analysis. EraMobile's target is group applications requiring high-level of reliability and the protocol aims to provide fully reliable multicast data delivery with minimal network overhead even in the adverse network conditions. EraMobile utilizes an epidemic-based method in multicast operation to cope with dynamic and unpredictable topology changes arising from the mobility. Our epidemic mechanism does not require the maintenance of any tree- or mesh-like structure for multicasting. It also needs neither having global or partial view of the network nor having information of neighboring nodes and group members. Besides, it substantially minimizes the overhead incurred by eliminating redundant data transmissions. Another distinguishing feature of EraMobile is its capability of adapting to varying node densities in order to provide reliable data delivery in both sparse networks, where the network connectivity is prone to interruptions, and dense networks, where congestion is likely to occur. We study the performance of EraMobile through comparative and extensive simulations on ns-2 network simulator. EraMobile is shown to achieve fully reliable multicasting for most of the scenarios investigated.