Energy-Efficient Multicast for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: A research on developing a protocol to conserve energy in MANETs

A MANET is composed of mobile nodes with no pre- established infrastructure; thus, at each instance, the mobile nodes form a temporary network. This network can be very useful in a wide variety of areas, from a battlefield to a conference room. Multicasting is a process of delivering information amongst a group. When we combine MANET and multicasting, we get a network, where each mobile node is connected in an ad hoc fashion and some of the mobile nodes form a cohesive group. Energy conservation is a big issue with the wireless network and even a bigger one with MANET. A transceiver's operating mode decides the energy consumption for an interface. There are four major operating modes: Transmit, Receive, Idle, and Sleep. Among these four modes, Sleep consumes the least amount of energy as an interface can neither transmit nor receive in this mode. In this research a new multicast protocol for MANET is suggested, which is designed to conserve energy by efficiently using the Sleep mode of transceivers.