Multicast scheduling in cellular data networks

H Won, H Cai, K Guo, A Netravali… - IEEE Transactions …, 2009 - ieeexplore.ieee.org
H Won, H Cai, K Guo, A Netravali, I Rhee, K Sabnani
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2009ieeexplore.ieee.org
Multicast is an efficient means of transmitting the same content to multiple receivers while
minimizing network resource usage. Applications that can benefit from multicast such as
multimedia streaming and download, are now being deployed over 3G wireless data
networks. Existing multicast schemes transmit data at a fixed rate that can accommodate the
farthest located users in a cell. However, users belonging to the same multicast group can
have widely different channel conditions. Thus existing schemes are too conservative by …
Multicast is an efficient means of transmitting the same content to multiple receivers while minimizing network resource usage. Applications that can benefit from multicast such as multimedia streaming and download, are now being deployed over 3G wireless data networks. Existing multicast schemes transmit data at a fixed rate that can accommodate the farthest located users in a cell. However, users belonging to the same multicast group can have widely different channel conditions. Thus existing schemes are too conservative by limiting the throughput of users close to the base station. We propose two proportional fair multicast scheduling algorithms that can adapt to dynamic channel states in cellular data networks that use time division multiplexing: inter-group proportional fairness (IPF) and multicast proportional fairness (MPF). These scheduling algorithms take into account (1) reported data rate requests from users which dynamically change to match their link states to the base station, and (2) the average received throughput of each user inside its cell. This information is used by the base station to select an appropriate data rate for each group. We prove that IPF and MPF achieve proportional fairness among groups and among all users inside a cell respectively. Through extensive packet-level simulations, we demonstrate that these algorithms achieve good balance between throughput and fairness among users and groups.
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