Exploring Performance of Hypercube Structure for Multicast in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Performance of multicast routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks is mostly characterized by underlying forwarding structure. Currently, general structures based on tree/mesh based scheme cannot handle with transmission efficiency, robustness to dynamic topology, scalability, and load balancing functionalities at the same time. To handle above key performance factors concurrently, we propose a new virtual backbone architecture for multicast, which is based on hierarchical hypercube structure. Due to the natural properties of hypercube structure, we can achieve efficiency, robustness and load balance in mobile ad hoc networks where links are frequently broken owing to nodes’ free immigration. Furthermore, scalability problem is naturally resolved by hierarchical structure. Finally, through simulation results, we have proven good scalability by demonstrating that our structure can provide higher packet delivery ratio with low control overhead and better scalability than tree/mesh based scheme without regard to the number of group members.