Abstract
This paper introduces MTORA, a new multicast routing protocol for ad hoc wireless networks. MTORA (Multicast mechanism for TORA) is running on top of TORA, which is a distributed ad hoc routing protocol. The idea behind MTORA is to use the routing information provided by TORA to determine the next hop dynamically for a multicast packet. A neighbor that can reach the maximum number of destinations will be the first choice to forward the packet. After that, we choose the next neighbor that can reach the maximum number of un-delivered destinations. This procedure is repeated until all destinations are sent. Since MTORA does not need to pre-establish any structure for multicast, neither a shared multicast tree nor a mesh topology, it saves lots of bandwidth consumption on control messages to maintain the multicast structure. The multicast routing paths in MTORA are dynamic, which allow it to react the network topology change. MTORA is simulated with NS. Our simulation results show that MTORA has a high delivery ratio and low overheads. It is thus feasible as a multicast routing protocol for ad hoc networks.