TrAM: Cross-Layer Efficient Application-Layer Multicast in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Application-layer multicast protocols more and more appear as attractive multicasting approaches, as they combine increased customizability of protocol mechanisms with the latters' ease of deployment. Both features especially become important in mobile ad-hoc networks, in which groups of users running applications with diverging requirements share limited network resources. The core of each application-layer multicast protocol is the so-called overlay network. Since the latter is used for data forwarding between group members, its topology as well as its topology maintenance mechanisms have a direct impact on the communication's efficiency. Their design thus requires special attention and detailed evaluations, with respect to potentially involved cross-layer effects. In this contribution we propose a novel overlay topology, which, because of its lightweight design, features an increased performance. For evaluation, we rely on simulative cross-layer analysis, in which we compare our protocol to other application-layer multicast approaches as well as to a simple n-times unicast strategy.