A multi-objective multicast routing optimization based on differential evolution in MANET

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a multi-objective differential evolution algorithm named as MOMR-DE to resolve multicast routing problem. In mobile ad hoc network (MANET), multicast routing is a non-deterministic polynomial -complete problem that deals with the various objectives and constraints. Quality of service (QoS) in the multicast routing problem mainly depends on cost, delay, jitter and bandwidth. So the cost, delay, jitter and bandwidth are always considered as multi-objective for designing multicast routing protocols. However, mobile node battery energy is finite and the network lifetime depends on node battery energy. If the battery power consumption is high in any one of the nodes, the chances of network’s life reduction due to path breaks are also more. On the other hand, node’s battery energy had to be consumed to guarantee high-level QoS in multicast routing to transmit correct data anywhere and at any time. Hence, the network lifetime should be considered as one objective of the multi-objective in the multicast routing problem. Design/methodology/approach Recently, many metaheuristic algorithms formulate the multicast routing problem as a single-objective problem, although it obviously is a multi-objective optimization problem. In the MOMR-DE, the network lifetime, cost, delay, jitter and bandwidth are considered as five objectives. Furthermore, three QoS constraints which are maximum allowed delay, maximum allowed jitter and minimum requested bandwidth are included. In addition, we modify the crossover and mutation operators to build the shortest-path multicast tree to maximize network lifetime and bandwidth, minimize cost, delay and jitter. Findings Two sets of experiments are conducted and compared with other algorithms for these problems. The simulation results show that our proposed method is capable of achieving faster convergence and is more preferable for multicast routing in MANET. Originality/value In MANET, most metaheuristic algorithms formulate the multicast routing problem as a single-objective problem. However, this paper proposes a multi-objective differential evolution algorithm to resolve multicast routing problem, and the proposed algorithm is capable of achieving faster convergence and more preferable for multicast routing.