A low-overhead DVR based multicast routing protocol for clustered MANET

Recently an efficient clustering protocol has been reported [1] for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET). The proposed clustered network has been shown to be more stable than the clustered networks as reported in [3] and [4]. In this paper, we have proposed a distance vector based multicast routing protocol for MANETs that are clustered following the idea of [1]. The proposed scheme needs much less amount of information exchange compared to the distance vector routing scheme designed for unclustered network. Because of significant reduction in distance vector routing table size and its adaptable nature to the changing ad-hoc network topology caused by node mobility this proposed multicasting routing protocol has been shown to offer efficient utilization of both limited memory and bandwidth for MANET. Besides, we have also shown how our clustered network can offer efficient resource utilization when CBT routing strategy is used.