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Multicast Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

M. A. Khan, M. Ahsan, G. A. Shah, Muhammad Sher
Abstract Wireless sensor network (WSN) is formed by collaboration of sensor nodes and static sink nodes. The sensor nodes sense certain information about an event from its environment and forward them to a sink node for processing and analysis. Besides unicast routing to a single sink node, a wide variety of WSN applications have also realized the presence of multiple sinks that necessitates multicast routing for efficient data dissemination to multiple destinations. For example, in emergency scenarios such as fire handling or any disaster surveillance, it isgenerally required to report event information to multiple sinks that includes hospitals, ambulatory service, rescue cell etc.However there are certain challenges in multicast routing protocols such as nodes mobility, energy and bandwidth constraints which need to be addressed. Various multicast routing protocols have been proposed by many researchers. This survey contributes in providing a comprehensive understanding of these multicast routing protocols, and identifies the future research directions in multicasting. We provide a detail survey of the existing multicast routing protocols and identify different issues and challenges that need to be resolved. Conclusion derived in this paper can lead to a new paradigm of multicast routing in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Index Terms Wireless Senor Networks (WSNs), Priced Trackand Transmit (PTNT), Branch Aggregation Multicast (BAM), Geographic Multicast Protocol (GMR), Hierarchical Rendezvous Point base multicast (HRPM).

1 INTRODUCTION
IRELESS sensor network (WSNs) is a collection of different sensor nodes which sense certain information from its surrounding and transfer that information for further processing to one or more interested nodes called sinks. A number of WSN applications are emerged to observe an abnormal activity in the sensors deployment area, such as military movement in a battlefield, sensing environmental changes and health monitoring. In some applications, sending the state information only to a single node is not sufficient such as bomb blast, earthquake, etc. Therefore, it is imperative to report to a group of nodes about the sensed events/data [1]. Due to resource limitations, sensor nodes usually adopt multihop communication paradigm in which packets are passed to the destination through multiple intermediate nodes. In unicast routing model, a source has to maintain independent routing paths with each of the destination nodes. This consumes tremendous amount of resources in maintaining these paths and routing event information. This problem can be addressed using a carefully designed multicast routing protocol. A number of routing techniques based on tree, mesh, or geographical zone topology are proposed for wireless sensor networks. These protocolscan be classified into unicast, geocast, anycast, broadcast andmulticast routing protocols. Unicast routing protocols are usedto send sensed information to a single node at destination. Geocast routing protocols are used to deliver sensed data toone or more nodes lying in a specific area of the network and there are geographical restrictions in these protocols rather than specific node ID.

Anycast routing protocols deals with data delivery to any node in a particular network. Broadcast routing protocols are used to send sensed data from a source sensor node to all other nodes lying in the deployment field.While multicast routing protocols are used for sending data packets from a single source to a group of nodes. The choice of any of these data dissemination techniques depend on the objectives of the application or certain scenario. Multicast routing protocols have become very important in emergency handling applications since these protocols minimize energy and bandwidth consumption, when there are multiple dispersed destination nodes. Consider a fire monitoring network in which sensor nodes are deployed in a building to detect the possibilityof fire. If the building catches fire at some point, then the sensor nodes at that location sense some smoke or abrupt temperature raise. The sensed information might be sent to anumber of nearby sensors at other parts of the building to adjust their sampling rate in addition to one or more sinks offire responders such as fire brigade office, ambulance service, hospitals etc. Hence, reporting emergency information to a group of sensor nodes besides the sink, allow the fire rescue teams to start their operations in time and more effectively. Thus, it is imperative to support multicast routing when eventdata needs to be disseminated to a group of nodes [2]. Push and Pull are the two basic data dissemination models insensor networks to gather event information. In push approach, all the sensor nodes in the network sense event and report to sink nodes without any explicit request. This model is not suitable for applications when events happen frequently and temporally

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2. TAXONOMY OF MULTICAST ROUTING

In this section we discuss that how multicast routing can be handled in wireless sensor networks. Multicast communication is handled with the help of multicast groups. Each multicast group consists of a number of sensor and sink nodes which are interested in receiving multicast data. There is no geographical limitation in these groups. Each node in multicast group maintains information about its neighbor nodes. It is important that multicast packets should be delivered reliably to each node in multicast group and also avoids routing loops as well as control overhead. For this purpose, many protocols are developed using different approaches, for example some protocols like Light weight adaptive multicast algorithm (LAM) [5] and Optimized Distributed Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP) [17] use flooding mechanism to send data packets from source to destination while others use source-based Trees or Shared Tree mechanism like MAODV [13], GMR [15] and HGMR [20]. Whenever a node wants to send data to a multicast group and if it does not have any pre-established route information then it initiates a route discovery process. Source node discovers route through its neighbor nodes with each memberof the group, thus a route discovery process configures the node in such a way that a packet originating from source node is received by all members of multicast group. Various configuration techniques are proposed to support multicast routing as classified in Fig. 1. The proposed multicast routing protocols are generally based on one of these approaches and inherit their features. In the following sections, we provide an insight to these techniques prior to proceeding for discussion of protocols.

Fig 1. Different Approaches for Multicast Routing

correlated. In such a case, pull model is more appropriate in which this information is pulled when required by explicitly sending query in network [3]. On the other hand a hybrid push pull approach is also proposed in which sensor nodes store data at a few relay points and then sink pulls data from these intermediate nodes [4]. Multicast routing protocols usually follow Pull data dissemination mode land inherits the issues associated with it such as higher event reporting delay. On the other hand, Push model has higher energy consumption. Therefore, hybrid model is a natural choice that can be adopted to reduce reporting delay with lower energy consumption. In heterogeneous sensor network where different sensor nodes are deployed for light, pressure, temperature etc. In such deployments, it is important that the event readings sent by a sensor node should be delivered to only those sensors sensing the same event, e.g. an abrupt change in temperature should be propagated to a group of temperature sensors to trigger them for possible occurrence of that event besides the sink nodes. A hybrid model would be useful in this scenario in which sink nodes can collectevent information from a group of sensor nodes having event readings from source nodes as the event occurs. Obviously, there is an urgent need of supporting multicast routing in WSN. Multicast routing has been addressed recently and a number of approaches are proposed based on tree, mesh, geocast and combination of these configurations. In this paper we provide an overview of existing multicast protocols and investigate the performance of these protocols with respect to many important parameters like overhead, delay, scalability and energy efficiency. The remaining sections of this paper are organized as follow. In Section II, We discuss taxonomy of multicast routing. In section III we provide an overview of existing protocols usedfor multicast communication in sensor networks. We present adetail description of these protocols and highlight their key points and weaknesses. In section IV, we briefly explain our observations with the help of table. Finally in section, V we conclude the research issues and future direction for multicast communication in wireless sensor networks.

2.1 Tree Based Approach

Tree based approach can be further divided into a) Source based tree construction b) Destination based tree construction. In source-based tree multicast routing protocols, the tree construction and the tree initiation starts from source node, which requires that the source node must have information about receivers addresses and topology of a multicast group.

Fig. 2. Black hole Attack in Wireless Sensor Networks

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Therefore, these protocols have high overhead due to tree configuration formed by each source node independently. Incase of mobile sensors the tree configuration is triggered frequently that incurs higher overhead as compared to the static sensors. However, the tree-based multicast routing protocols require a minimum number of copies of each data packet to send to the members of group, which decreases the traffic load and bandwidth utilization. Different algorithms like Multiple Distribution Point (MDP) [7], Minimum transmission energy (MTE) [8] etc, are used for tree construction. These algorithms are generally applicable when the network topologyis static or changes do not affect the constructed tree. Since reconfiguration or maintenance of multiple trees increases control overhead. It is important that the protocol must be much efficient and reflect the topological changes constantly so that the reconstruction of the tree does not cause extra delay in data transmission. Multicast tree is constructed on the basis of different parameters such as hop count and link quality indicator (LQI) like delay, bandwidth or aggregated weight of these parameters. The tree base approach provides shortest and loop free paths and it is easy to join or leave a multicast group. On the other hand, the drawback of tree base structure is that any link failure may cause the isolation of complete branch from tree which may have multiple nodes.

geocast group member is defined by its geographical location. Recently many geocast routing protocols have been developed like Flooding based, routing-based and cluster-based protocols. Examples of which are LocationBased Multicast algorithm (LBM) [9] and Geocast Adaptive Mesh Environment for Routing (GAMER) protocols [10]. Fig.3 identifies a geocast group where S node sends data to number of nodes D in specific area. An advantage of geocast approachis that it performs efficiently in heterogeneous networks.However this approach has scalability limitations therefore it is not suitable in large networks.

Fig 3. Geocast Communication Scenario

2.2 Mesh Based Approach

In Mesh-based approach, all the group members form mesh connectivity, so that every member has a connection with the other members. In mesh structure, route discovery and mesh construction is accomplished by two ways a)Through broadcasting b) through central points Unlike tree based approach, mesh based approach is more robust and reliable especially when the nodes mobility increases. There are redundant paths to access any node in the topology. However the main drawback in mesh approach is that it requires more control messages than a tree based approach and result in high bandwidth and energy consumption. Mesh-based approach has few advantages it eliminates the traffic problem. Because it there are dedicated links which distributes the load among multiple available paths. This approach is more robust because any link failure does not disturb the overall communication. Mesh based approach has difficulties in configuration which makes it more costly than other approaches. Similarly direct connectivity of a single node with multiple nodes alsoincreases the number of I/O ports.

2.4 Rendezvous Based Approach

In this approach, a subset of nodes or a single node act as rendezvous points (RP) in the network. These RP collect sensed data from different sensor nodes and transfer them to the sink nodes. RPs are mobile nodes and visit each node in the network after specific time interval. Any node which want to send data will wait for RP and when RP comes in its range than it send data packets towards RP which will further deliver it to destination node in the network [11].A disadvantage of RP is that it is a time consuming approach and any RP failure may cause a big damage in the network.

2.5 Cluster Based Approach

Cluster based routing is a new approach used for multicast communication. In this approach energyefficient clusters are formed randomly in deployed sensor networks. Each cluster is managed with the help of cluster head CH. Each CH acts as a coordinator which receives messages from the cluster members and transmits them towards destination nodes or sink. Cluster members can communicate with each other easily but for longrange communication CH are involved for messages transmission. Clusters are maintained for a short time called a round. A round consists of an election phase anda data transfer phase. Each cluster head is elected after election process in the network. There is possibility that after each round different node will act as a cluster head. All clusters are not destroyed at the end of each round some cluster may retain for many rounds. Which reduce the number of head elections and therefore bur-

2.3 Geocasting Based Approach

In multicast communication data is delivered to a number of nodes which are geographically dispersed in a deployment field and there is no restriction on the boundary for data transmission. In contrast, geocast communication has restriction on the boundary of destination nodes in which data packets are delivered to a set of nodes lying within a specific geographical area. A

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den of long-range transmissions is more efficiently distributed among the nodes. Although the cluster head election is energy consuming. After a specified number of transmissions, a new set of clusters are formed. Cluster based approach is an efficient approach. However thereis time consumption in election phase of cluster heads CHs.

MULTICAST ROUTING PROTOCOLS

In this section we describe different multicast routing protocols which are proposed in wireless sensor network. There are many protocols available for this purpose but these protocols have some issues and challenges according to todays scenarios. To identify these issues and challenges we give a detail discussion of these protocols and point out the advantages and disadvantages of these protocols in sensor networks.

events information delivery to actor nodes. Otherwise the attack may cause a lot of destruction. III) As clear from the experiment and simulation in research paper [12] BAM is designed for static networks where both sensors as well as sink nodes are static. In case of mobile sensors the BAM protocol will be unable to handle the communication in wireless sensor network. IV) BAM protocol has not the ability to create multicast groups and subgroups in the network therefore in case of large networks this protocol cannot perform efficiently. V) BAM protocol is an event driven protocol and activated only when an event occur. Therefore in some networks if we are interested in other information regarding any event to occur than BAM fails to perform efficiently.

3.2 Multicast Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector RoutingProtocol (MAODV)

Multicast Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector Routing Protocol (MAODV) [13] is an important protocol designed for multicast communication in Ad-hoc networks. However this protocol is implemented in wireless sensor networks in 2007 by J, Sa, Silva et al [14]. He compares the results of three protocols AODV, MAODV and a broadcast approach in its final results. He proved that the performance of multicast routing protocol MAODV is far better than the other two approaches. MAODV discover routes for data transfer in on demand fashion whenever a node wants to send data; it first broadcast the address of its destination node and then wait for reply from that destination. Whenever the destination nodereceives that requested packet it reply through the same routeto sender node and then data is forwarded towards that node. There are some research issues needs to resolve in MAODV. I) MAODV protocol has high overhead because this protocol discover the routes in on demand fashion therefore before transfer actual data destination address is broadcast in the network. This technique of the protocol delivers extra datain the network which causes high overhead and bandwidth utilization. II) MAODV protocol has high delay in the sense of message delivery to the destination node. The source node will wait until a suitable route is discovered to access the destination. III) MAODV is an energy inefficient protocol. On demand route discovery consume much energy on source as well as other nodes in the route which can be toleratedin wireless sensor networks having very limited energy. IV) MAODV protocol is not a real time protocol because there istoo much delay in route discovery therefore this protocol is unable to deliver the data in real time. Because of the above drawbacks MAODV is not a suitable protocol for wireless sensor actor networks (WSANs).

3.1 Branch Aggregation Multicast Protocol

A.Oura et al [12] proposed a multicast protocol for multicast communication in wireless sensor networks known as Branch Aggregation Multicast protocol (BAM). BAM protocol use two approaches for communication I) Single Hop Aggregation (S-BAM) II) Multiple Path Aggregation (M-BAM) S-BAM used for aggregation of radiotransmissions in a single hop. It enables a single transmissionto multiple receivers in the network. M-BAM used for aggregation of multiple routes into fewer ones. It also controls the range of radio transmission. S-BAM is especially designed to reduce redundant communications at every branch while M-BAM is designed to reduce the number of branches in a tree. These two approaches can be combined in many situations which are known as (SMBAM). The combined approach uses the characteristics of both techniques S-BAM control the redundant communication while M-BAM controls the number of branches in the tree. This techniques of merging both approaches helps to reduce overhead as well as energy consumption. The branch aggregation multicast routing protocol do not divide the network in multicast groups therefore it decreases communication overhead because there are no extra messages in the network to join a multicast group, leave a multicast group or any acknowledgement from the base node in a multicast group. This approach also decreases the bandwidth utilization and energy consumption in the energy constraint wireless sensor networks where we have very limited energy in each sensor node. This behavior of BAM shows that its an energy efficient protocol. Another property of BAM protocol is that it can work with any other protocol in wireless sensor network therefore this protocol can perform better inheterogeneous networks where multiple protocols are i nvolved in communication process. However there are still certain research issues which creates problems I) BAM protocol has scalability issue because any changein the network may affect the performance of this protocol. II) BAM protocol do not support real time communication therefore this protocol is not suitable for wireless sensor actor network where we needs in time

3.3 Geographic Multicast Protocol

Juan A. Sanchez et al proposed another protocol based on geocast approach [15] in 2006 known as (GMR) Geographic multicast protocol. GMR protocol was much efficient and reliable protocol for multicast communication. However the main drawback of this protocol was

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high overhead and maximum bandwidth utilization. To resolve these issues the author by itself in 2007 makes it bandwidth efficient [16]. GMR usedits neighbor information to forward the data packets from source to destination. Therefore it is necessary that each nodemay know about its neighbors. The bandwidth utilization and overhead is decreased to avoid flooding in GMR protocol. Whenever a node wants to send data it simply forward it to its neighbor who has information about their own neighbors so the data is forwarded towards destination without overhead but still it faces delay. The protocol performance is measured through cost over progress scheme where cost is number of neighbor selection, if number of neighbor selected is high it means that the cost will be higher similarly the progress is achieved when the data packet become nearer to the destination in each step. As discussed that GMR protocol is a localized protocol and depends on the neighbor information therefore it does not required broadcast technique for data delivery to multiple nodes. GMR protocol is designed for small networks with low or medium number of nodes therefore GMR protocol will not efficiently performs in large and dense networks. GMR protocol uses combination of tree based and Geocast based approaches for multicast communication. After above discussion we can easily point out many problems in GMR protocol such as. I) Although GMR protocol resolved the issues of bandwidth utilization and overhead as compare to its previous version but still because of neighbors information forwarding too much overhead is generated in the network that is not feasible and affordable especially for sensor nodes with lower energy. II) GMR protocol has scalability issues because it is designed for small networks with low or medium node density therefore it will perform poor in large networks as well in high densitynetworks. III) GMR protocol is an energy inefficient protocol thats why not suitable to implement in wireless sensor networks. Similarly it also exhibits high delay in communication. IV) The major drawback of GMR protocol is that it does not support real time communication which may cause destruction at large level inside the networks.

receiving the invitation message sink nodes send an acknowledgment to source node for confirmation. All nodes through which the invitation message passed and reached to sink nodes and then again followed by acknowledgement messages sent by sink nodes stores the whole routes IDs. This is basically a two phase process where invitation message is first sent and then acknowledgement is received. However this protocol has certain limitations, such as I) ODMRP protocol has high overhead because of the twophase communication problem in which invitation message is flooded and then acknowledgement is transferred. II) ODMRP has high delay because of route establishment between source and multiple sinks. II) ODMRP is also an event driven protocol like BAM. Therefore it cannot perform efficiently whenever we need data without any event occurrence in the network. IV) This protocol is an energy inefficient protocol because a lot of energy is consumed in forwarding invitation messages and then wait for acknowledgement message. V) ODMRP protocol does not support real time communication which is necessary for in time information delivery to interested nodes.

3.5 Hierarchical (HRPM)

Rendezvous

Point

Multicast

3.4. Optimized Distributed Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP)

Yang Min et al proposed a distributed protocol for multicast routing in wireless sensor network known as Optimized distributed multicast routing protocol (ODMRP) [17]. This protocol is an improved version of distributed multicast routing protocol (DMRP) [18]. The major problem in old protocols was that they did not consider multi sinks in the network. ODMRP use tree based approach for multicast communication.The construction of the multicast tree is based on shortest path from source to sink node. In ODMRP protocol the communication process is initiated from the source node therefore ODMRP is source based tree protocol. Whenever a specific event occurs than the source node flood the invitation message towards all sinks nodes in the network. After

Hierarchical Rendezvous Point Multicast (HRPM) is another protocol proposed for multicast communication. HRPM was first designed for ad-hoc network and then implemented in wireless sensor network in 2007 [19] [20]. As clear from its name this protocol HRPM uses a hierarchy for data forwarding from source to destination. Therefore it has no cost maintenance like GMR protocol. HRPM protocol constructs different trees for multicast communication and uses geographic forwarding for transferring of data down the tree because of extra burden of tree construction and geographical forwarding it consume a lot of energy therefore its an energy inefficient protocol. Another property of HRPM is division of network in multicast groups and then into subgroups. Eachsubgroup is controlled by its coordinator that is also called access point (AP). All access points (APs) are connected with Rendezvous point (RP). This hierarchical distribution of work in the network reduces overhead as well as bandwidth utilization. There are many advantages as well as challenges in this protocol likeI) HRPM protocol has lower communication overhead than GMR protocolbecause of the hierarchical setup. II) Delay in HRPM is also lower than GMR protocol it maintain certain information. III) This protocol is a scalable protocol and itsperformance does not decrease due to any changes in network size or node density. IV) HRPM is an energy inefficient protocol. V) This protocol also does not support real time routing.

3.6 Hierarchical Geographic Multicast Routing (HGMR)

Dimitrios Koutsonikolas et al proposed a new protocol for multicast communication that is combination of two important protocols GMR protocol and HRPM

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protocol. HGMR [20] protocol inherit the quality of HRPM protocol in scalability, Delay, overhead and state information maintenance. Howeverit also resolves the issue of energy inefficiency exist in HRPM and GMR protocol. This protocol does not waste the nodes energy. HGMR protocol handles the efficient routing with thehelp of multicast groups. Each multicast group is controlled with an access point (AP) as used in HRPM protocol but in HGMR protocol numbers of access points (APs) are not too large as in HRPM. Each access point (AP) uses different relaypoints for data forwarding. From above discussion it is clear that HGMR protocol satisfy most requirements of multicasting in wireless sensor networks. However there are still some problems in HGMR protocol. Those are I) HGMR Protocol do not support real time multicast communicationin sensor network therefore not a suitable protocol for WSANs. Although delay in this protocol is comparatively lower than other existing protocols. II) HGMR is designed for static wireless sensor networks where as in wireless sensor actor network both sensor nodes and actor nodes are mobile therefore this protocol cannot perform efficiently in mobile scenario of WSANs [20].

this protocol is not feasible for implementation in wireless sensor actor network (WSAN). This protocol has some drawbacks such as I) LWMP has high overhead because of its extra traffic generated for tracking and transmission. II) This protocol cannot handle the mobility of sink node whenever it moves backand forth in the network although we cannot restrict a nodes movement. III) LWMP is an energy inefficient protocol due to high consumption of energy. IV) LWMP has scalability issues and any change in the network size and node density decreases its efficiency and reliability. V) This protocol does not support real time communication therefore cannot implement in wirelesssensor actor networks (WSAN).

3.8 Very Lightweight Mobile Multicast system (VLM)

VLM2 is another technique used before LWMP using PTNTapproach for multicast communication. In this approach everynode is identified by its ID. The ID consists of multiple portions, personal identification of sensor node, and identificationof that multicast group to which this node belongs etc. Whenevera sensor node wants to become a member of multicast group it send a request for subscription to any member ofthe multicast group and then wait for its acknowledgement. For communication between sensor and sink node unicast routing is used in a multicast group while communication between sink node and sensor nodes are handled with the help of multicast routing [23]. VLM uses flooding mechanism for transfer beacons to under lying sensor nodes. As clear from research article [21] in which VLM2 is compared with other protocols shows that this protocol has high delay, overhead and scalability problems. Because of these limitations this protocol is not feasible for WSANs. I) VLW is an energy inefficient protocol therefore it is notsuitable for wireless sensor networks. II) VLM has very high overhead, delay and scalability issues. III) This protocol does not support real time communication therefore not suitable for wireless sensor actor network.

3.7 Lightweight Protocol for Multicast (TNT/PTNT)

Due to limited resources in wireless sensor networks QingYe, et al [21] proposed a new light weight approach for multicast communication. He introduced track and transmit (TNT) approach to check the position of sink node in the network, a sink node is capable to move from one place to another place. The new position of the sink node is tracked everytime and after tracking data is forwarded towards it. Although the TNT approach was not too much efficient therefore the author also proposed an improved form of TNT known asPriced track and transmits (PTNT). The new approach PTNT is more efficient than TNT as clear from simulation results [21]. As compared to TNT and VLM2, which are old approaches, PTNT has lower overhead and delay. Maximum number of packets is received in PTNT at destination. This approach has a unique ability to easily implement in static and mobile scenarios of wireless sensor network. The sink nodes broadcast beacon messages continuously in the network which increases bandwidth consumption and network overhead. When a sensor node receive the beacon it acknowledge with its shortest path information. PTNT consider the distance to destination as a price [22] and as much distance to destination is decreases price is also decreases therefore PTNT give the guarantee that after each routing step the data packet will be more nearer to destination as compare to previous location. This protocol is designed for small networks therefore any change in network size and node density affects the performance of this protocol. It also consumes a lot of energy by continuously sending beacons and receiving acknowledgements therefore its an energy inefficient protocol. The LWMP protocol resolves certain issues of delay and mobility in multicast communication but still there are few research issues in this protocol due to which

3.9Actor Director Cluster Based Multicast Protocol (ADCMP)

M. A. Khan, G. A Shah et al, proposed a framework for multicast communication and coordination in Wireless Sensor Actor Networks. The proposed framework is based on Actor Directed Clustering Protocol (ADCMP), which configures all the sensors in the network and form different clusters, which propagates any information about an event to their respective cluster heads as well as to nearest actor nodes actors. The cluster heads in the network are responsible for efficient data delivery to actor nodes without delay which assists actor nodes in takinga quick action and thus performing its role of sensing and reacting in the deployment field. ADCMP is an actor directed clustering protocol which dynamically forms clusters according to multicast requirements in which a node, closer to the actor, becomes a cluster-head for the nodes which are farther.

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Thus the transmission is always directed towards the actor that minimizes the energy consumption in multicast routing. There are two phases of cluster formation. In the first phase, every sensor node broadcast periodicbeacon that contains the residual energy of node, location, transmission power (Pt) in use and probability of cluster head (PCH). Nodes listening such beacons from their neighbors maintain a table to record this information. If an entry already exists in the table, it is updated with the recent values. Actors also broadcast their location periodically or whenever their location is changed.

4 SUMMARY OF WSN,S MULTICAST PROTOCOLS

In this section we give a brief description about behavior and properties of each protocol with respect to different parameters like overhead, delay, scalability, stateless, energyefficiency, multicast groups and real time communication. The table 1 shows that each protocol has certain advantages as well as some drawbacks. Every protocol exhibits different behavior under same conditions. Many routing protocols have high overhead which causes greater energy consumption on the sensor nodes. That why these protocols are energy inefficient protocols which is much clear from table 1 column 6 and this poses a major problem for sensor nodes because there is limited energy on each sensor node. Similarly maximum protocols have scalability issues and any increase in node density as well as network size affects the protocol performance. Wireless Sensor networks have much significance in real life situations. In many dangerous scenarios it becomes necessary that the data transfer takes place in real time. However there is no support for real time routing in existing multicast protocol (last column of table 1).

5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

In this paper, a survey on multicast protocols of wireless sensor networks is presented. The purpose of this paper is to discuss different characteristics, approaches, and parameters to identify the limitations in existing multicast routing protocols of wireless sensor networks (WSN). We explain that why these protocols are not feasible to implement in Wireless sensor actor networks (WSAN). There are many reasons behind this claim such as 1. The major issue in these protocols is that no existingmulticast protocol of WSN provide real time multicast communication which is important in WSANs for in time action against any attack. 2. Existing multicast protocols have security issues andthere is possibility that some important data may be accessed by any attacker node especially in the battle field. 3. To avoid self destruction due to some ambiguous information and take proper action against an attack WSANs require certain level of QoS which is not provided by existing multicast protocols in WSNs. 4. Due to limited energy in sensor nodes we should bemore conscious about energy consumption although the existing multicast routing protocol are energy ineffi-

cient however wecannot afford too much energy consumption is WSAN. We believe our survey will be very useful to the research community and also serve as an introductory support for multicast communication in wireless sensor networks. A. Future Work Up to date many efforts have been done in the research community to make the multicast communication more efficient and reliable. However there are still many issues that should be resolved and keep in mind while designing a new multicast routing protocol. These issues are as follow 1) Real Time Routing: The sensed information should be delivered to destination without any delay. Because any delay in case of some emergency scenario cause a big destruction in the network. 2) Scalability: The multicast protocol should be scalable in order to support any change in the network such as increase in number of nodes in a multicast group, mobility area and heterogeneity of nodes. 3) Security: Security is another challenging issue that should be resolved for communication among members of a single multicast group and between multicast groups. 4) Energy Constraints: Energy consumption is another issue that should be in mind before designing a new multicast routing protocol. Wireless sensor nodes have very limited energy and it is required that a multicast protocol consume lower energy to avoid starvation of sensors in the network. 5) Multiple Sources: Most of the multicast routing protocolsin wireless sensor networks are designed to support singlesource multicasting. However there is possibility that multiple sources at a time want to multicast their sensed data especially in heterogeneous sensor networks. Therefore in such situation existing multicast protocols cannot operate efficiently. At the end we conclude that existing multicast protocols in sensor network are not suitable for wireless sensor actor networks (WSANs). We intend to investigate different techniques for developing a new energy efficient and real time multicast protocol according to the specific requirements of WSAN. We also propose a new approach for multicast communicationin WSAN. This new approach is heterogeneous approach and combination of multiple multicast approaches.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We wish to thanks Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, HEC Pakistan and International Islamic University Islamabad for their support in this research work.

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Madden, The design of an acquisitional query processor for sensor networks In the Proceedings of the 2003 ACM SIGMOD internationalconference on Management of data. ACM Press, 2003. Liu, Combs, Needles, Haystacks, Balancing Push and Pull for Discoveryin Large Scale Sensor Networks, in the Proceeding of the 2nd InternationalConference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems Sensys 2004. LuoJunhai, Ye Danxia, Xue Liu, and Fan Mingyu A Survey of MulticastRouting Protocols for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, IEEE CommunicationSurveys and Tutorials,volume.11, No.1,First quarter 2009. Paul Juell, Daniel Brekke, Ron Vetter, A Multicast Tree ConstructionAlgorithm for Large Multiparty Conferences Telecommunication Systems, 299321, 2001. G.S. Badrinath, Sajal K. Das,et al Maximum Lifetime Tree Constructionfor Wireless Sensor Networks ICDCIT, LNCS 4882, pp. 158165,Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007. Bor-rong Chen, Kiran-Kumar, Muniswamy-Reddy, Matt Welsh, Ad-HocMulticast Routing on Resource Limited Sensor Nodes, In proceedings of Second ACM-Sigmobile workshop on Multi-hop Ad Hoc Networks: fromtheory to reality 2006. Y. Ko, N.H. Vaidya, Geocasting in mobile ad hoc networks location based multicast algorithms Proceedings of the Second IEEE Workshop onMobile Computing Systems and Applications (WMCSA99), pp. 101-110, 1999. Tracy Campa, Yu Liu, An adaptive mesh-based protocol for geocast routing J. Parallel Distrib.Comput. 196213 Elsevier Science (USA)2003. Guoliang Xing, Tian Wang, WeijiaJia, Rendezvous Planning in Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Elements IEEE Transactions onMobile Computing, VOL. 7, NO. 12, December 2008. Akihito Okura, Takeshi Ihara, Akira Miura, BAM: Branch Aggregation Multicast for Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proc. of the IEEE ComputerCommunications, 2005. Elizabeth M. Royer, Charles E. Perkins. Multicast Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector Routing (MAODV).IETF Internet

nologies andApplications 2007. [21] Qing Ye, Liang Cheng, A Lightweight Approach to Mobile Multicasting in Wireless Sensor Networks Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing Special Issue, 2005. [22] Liu, Combs, Needles, Haystacks Balancing Push and Pull for Discovery in Large Scale Sensor Networks Published in the Proceeding of the 2nd International Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems (Sensys-04), pp. 122-133, 2004. [23] Anmol Sheth, Brian Shucker, Richard Han, VLM2: Very Light weightMobile Multicast System for Wireless Sensor Networks, In Proceedings of international conference IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking2003. [24] M. A. Khan, G. A. Shah, A QOS Based Secure Multicast Communication Framework for WSANsInternational Journal of Innovative Computing, Information and Control, pp- 7003- 7020, Vol 7, (2), ISSN 1349-4198, 2011. TABLE 1.COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT MULTICAST PROTOCOLS IN SENSOR NETWORK S. No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Protocol Over head Low High High High Low Low High High Low Delay Scala bility Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No No Stateless Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes E. Efficient Yes No No No No Yes No No Yes Real Time No No No No No No No No Yes

BAM MAODV GMR ODMRP HRPM HGMR LWMP VLMP ADCMP

Low High High High Low Low Low High Low

TABLE 2.EXPLAINATION OF MULTICAST ROUTING PROTOCOLS ACRONYM S.No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Protocol/Algorithm Acronym /Name BAM MAODV GMR ODMRP HRPM HGMR LWMP VLMP ADCMP Protocol /Algorithm Name Branch Aggregation Multicast Protocol Multicast Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector Routing Protocol Geographic Multicast Protocol Optimized Distributed Multicast Routing Protocol Hierarchical Rendezvous Point Multicast Hierarchical Geographic Multicast Routing Lightweight Multicast Protocol Very Lightweight Mobile Multicast Protocol Actor Directed Cluster Based Multicast Protocol

Draft, 2000.
[14] J, Sa, Silava et al. Multicast in Wireless Sensor Network the next step 2nd international symposium on Wireless Pervasive computing,5-7 Feb, 2007. [15] Juan A. Sanchez, Pedro M. Ruiz, Ivan Stojmenovic, GMR: Geographic Multicast Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks IEEE Communications Society published in the IEEE SECON proceedings, 2006. [16] Juan A. Sanchez, Pedro M. Ruiz, Bandwidth Efficient Geographic Multicast Routing Protocol for Wireless sensor Network IEEE Sensor Journal VOL-7 No, 5 May 2007. [17] Yang Min, Yu Bo, Han Peng , Mao Dilin, GaoChuanshan, A optimized Distributed Multicast Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network,IEEE Communications 2006. [18] Yang Min, et al, A Light-weight Multicast Schema for Wireless Sensor Network with Multi-Sinks, 2nd International conference on wirelesscommunications, networking and mobile computing, P.R.China, September, 2006. [19] S. M. Das, H. Pucha, Y. C. Hu, Distributed hashing for scalablemulticast in wireless Ad-hoc networks, IEEE TPDS, 2007. [20] DimitriosKoutsonikolas, Saumitra Das, Y. Charlie Hu, Ivan StojmenovicHierarchical Geographic Multicast Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks, IEEE International Conference on Sensor Tech-

M. A. Khan received his BS & MS degree with major Communication & Networks in Computer Science, from International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan and PhD degree in Wireless Networks jointly from University of Missouri, USA and International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan in 2011. He worked as a Research Scientist at University of Missouri, USA. Later he joined University of Ulm as PostDoc Fellow in 2011. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, KPK. His main research interests are Routing,

2012 Journal of Computing Press, NY, USA, ISSN 2151-9617

JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 4, ISSUE 9, SEPTEMBER 2012, ISSN (Online) 2151-9617 https://sites.google.com/site/journalofcomputing WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.ORG

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Security, QoS, Energy Efficiency and Localization in Wireless Sensor & Actor Networks (WSANs). He received HEC fellowship, USAID scholarship and distinction scholarships from IIUI. He has been involved in the review process of various journals Springer Wireless Communication, Wiley InterScience Wireless Communication & Mobile Computing, Elsevier adhoc networks, IJATIT, IJCSI, etc. and the conferences; IEEE SCS, WASET, Globecom, INMIAC, WASNet, ICWCMC, and and IEEE ICC etc. He is a member of IEEE Communication Society, Springer and ACM. Mr. M. Ahsan received his Msc in Computer Science from Int, Islamic University Islamabad and MS in Computer Science from EME College, Rawalpindi. He is working as an Assistant Professor at the department of Telecom Management Int, Islamic University, Islamabad. His research interests are wireless networks, security and routing. Ghalib A. Shah received his Ph.D. degree in computer engineeringfrom Middle East Technical University, Ankara Turkey in January 2007. Heworked as a PostDoc fellow at MiddleEast Technical University, Northern Cyprus Campus in 2007.Later, he joined College of E & ME, National Universityof Sciences & Technology Islamabad as an assistantprofessor. He is also awarded a COMSTECHTWASjoint research grant for young researchers, madein a highly competitive contest. He has been involvedin the review process of various journals IEEE TVT,Computer Networks, Elsevier adhoc networks etc. and theconferences; PIMRC, MCVT, MCWC, IEEE GlobecomWASNet, WCS, and ISWCS 2006 and IEEE ICC etc.His current research interests include multimedia wirelessnetworks, next-generation wireless networks, wireless sensorand actor networks. He is also a member of ACM andAustralian Computer Society.

2012 Journal of Computing Press, NY, USA, ISSN 2151-9617