Abstract
Multicasting is increasingly important for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). A MANET is comprised of mobile nodes, potentially without any infrastructure. Many MANET applications need multicasting, as it provides a simple and reliable communication mechanism by using the inherent broadcasting property of wireless transmissions, and can significantly improve the bandwidth efficiency. Multicasting reduces transmission overhead and power consumption. In the past couple of years, several multicast routing protocols have been proposed for both wired networks and MANETs. In this thesis, a simple but Scalable Multicast Forwarding (SSMF) is developed. The proposed SSMF protocol is an extension of Simplified Multicast Forwarding (SMF) for MANETs, and is independent of any underlying unicast protocol.
