Patent ID: 8144708

Claim:
A method for collaborative multicast routing, comprising: multicasting in a hybrid, multi-tiered, heterogeneous mobile wireless network using a control packet to uniformly manage multicasting operations; establishing a multicast route; maintaining the multicast route; if it is determined that a link is severed within the multicast route, recovering the severed link using local communication units; if it is determined that a partition has occurred in a multicast group, merging partitioned multicast trees of the multicast group using local communication units; and wherein the control packet comprises: a mode parameter for identifying a purpose of the packet; a multicast group identification parameter for allowing the communication unit to determine if the communication unit belongs to the multicast group; a source parameter for identifying the source; an Originator parameter for identifying the originator of the packet; a Forwarder parameter for identifying the forwarder of the packet; a Routing Table, comprising a FORWARD NODE LIST for identifying the communication units traversed by the control packet along the forward direction from the source to destination, and a BACKWARD NODE LIST for identifying the communication units traversed by the control packet along the backward direction from the destination to source; a Reconstructed Flag parameter for identifying if the path established has been reconstructed; a Forwarding Flag parameter for determining if a packet should be forwarded; a Receptive-Inbound parameter for identifying transmission of a signal from the communication unit; and a Receptive-Outbound parameter for identifying the reception of a signal from the communication unit.