| Abstract |
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An independent, self-governing group of mobile wireless hosts communicate through wireless links by forming a temporary network (Mobile Ad-hoc Network) in a dynamic manner without any fixed and centralized infrastructure. Since the nodes in MANET are not stationary, same path may not be taken always for routing between the sender and the receiver(s). So, routing in such situation is a complicated task. In addition, the resources of the wireless nodes are limited. With the intention of saving the resources of the nodes in the network, multicasting can be used instead of multiple unicast data transmissions whenever a node needs to send same data in parallel to several destinations. The group-oriented services are the primary ones that support today’s need and trend of communication. In recent years, such services are provided with the help of MANETs. The residual energy of the battery of a mobile node is finite (before recharging is done), which is a constraint while developing multicast routing protocols. Genetic Algorithm (GA) presents an improved solution for the multi-constrained multicast routing problem. By choosing proper fitness function and values for metrics such as initial population size, crossover and mutation that closely relates to the chosen scenario, the genetic algorithm optimizes the routes in terms of selected metrics. This paper focuses to provide a survey and analyses the categories of multicast routing protocols. In addition, this also covers the details of the application of genetic approach in finding multicast routes. |
