A multipath QoS multicast routing protocol based on link stability and route reliability in mobile ad-hoc networks

Recently, the use of real-time multimedia applications has attracted the attention of mobile ad hoc network users. These applications support service quality. The characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks such as lack of central coordinator, mobility of hosts, dynamic changes in network topology and the limitation of access to resources have caused remarkable challenges in providing high quality services for mobile ad hoc networks. Bandwidth limitation of wireless nodes and the lack of adequate multicast trees are regarded as the main challenges for quality of service-based multicast routing. In this paper, an attempt was made to propose a more stable and more reliable in multi-path quality of service multicast routing protocol (SR-MQMR) for mobile ad-hoc networks. In the proposed method, considering the requested bandwidth, the researchers first used the signal strength of nodes to select the most stable nodes. Then, using the two parameters of route expiration time and the number of hops, we selected a route which had low delay and high stability. The results of simulations conducted in the present study indicated that the SR-MQMR protocol used less time slots than the MQMR protocol in the routing process which resulted in an increase in success ratio. Furthermore, the production of stable routes led to a significant enhancement of reliability. Since the reduction of route request packet exchange decreased overhead in the proposed method, the degree of consumed bandwidth decreased which led to an increase in network lifetime.