GA-Based Heuristic Algorithms for QoS Based Multicast Routing

Computing the bandwidth-delay-constrained least-cost multicast routing tree is an NP-complete problem. In this paper, we propose a novel QoS-based multicast routing algorithm based on the genetic algorithms (GA). In the proposed algorithm, the connectivity matrix of edges is used for genotype representation. Some novel heuristics are also proposed for mutation, crossover, and creation of random individuals. We evaluate the performance and efficiency of the proposed GA-based algorithm in comparison with other existing heuristic and GA-based algorithms by the result of simulation. The proposed algorithm has overcome all of the previous algorithms in the literature. q 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.