An Enhanced Mobile Multicast Protocol

The packet loss problem that occurs in the mobile multicast (MoM) protocol due to designated multicast service provider (DMSP) handoff is investigated through simulation experiments for several DMSP selection policies. Then, two enhanced DMSP schemes are proposed to minimize the packet loss of the MoM protocol with single DMSP. The first scheme uses a backup DMSP and greatly reduces the packet loss rate at the expense of the increased network traffic. The second scheme utilizes the extended DMSP operation and shows many desirable features such as the almost-zero packet loss rate and relatively low network traffic.