Forwarding Group Multicast Protocol (FGMP) for multihop, mobile wireless networks

In this paper we propose a new multicast protocol for multihop mobile wireless networks. Instead of forming multicast trees, a group of nodes in charge of forwarding multicast packets is designated according to members' requests. Multicast is then carried out via “scoped” flooding over such a set of nodes. The forwarding group is periodically refreshed to handle topology/membership changes. Multicast using forwarding group takes advantage of wireless broadcast transmissions and reduces channel and storage overhead, thus improving the performance and scalability. The key innovation with respect to wired multicast schemes like DVMRP is the use of flags rather than upstream/downstream link state, making the protocol more robust to mobility. The dynamic reconfiguration capability makes this protocol particularly suitable for mobile networks. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated via simulation and is compared to that of DVMRP and global flooding. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.