A multicast routing algorithm based on searching in directed graph

Aiming at constructing a delay and delay variation bounded Steiner tree in the real‐time streaming media communication, in this paper, we discuss a multicast routing algorithm based on searching a directed graph (MRASDH). During the process of the construction of the multicast tree, some nodes and links in the network topology do not affect the outcome of the constructed tree. Therefore, based on the thought of shrinking the search space through deleting these non‐relative nodes and edges to the utmost, the ant algorithm is utilized to generate a directed sub‐graph of the network topology for each destination node, in which each node owns a bounded out‐degree. And all these sub‐graphs can be merged into a new directed graph that serves as the new search space. In the new space, the simulated annealing algorithm is applied to obtain a multicast tree that satisfies the condition for the optimization. The performance analysis and simulation results demonstrate that this algorithm can effectively construct a delay and delay variation bounded multicast tree. They also show that the algorithm have lower time complexity than the current ones, which means a much better result would be achieved when the system scale rises greatly.