Joint scheduling and power control for multicasting in cellular wireless networks

We consider a cellular wireless network. Our aim is to develop adaptive-power scheduling algorithms that enable area base stations to coordinate, on a time-division basis, the transmission of multicast packets to identified client nodes, for scenarios under which a prescribed code rate is employed. Such mechanisms can be implemented by 4G long term evolution (LTE) systems using multimedia broadcast multicast services (MBMS), meshed WiFi networks, or mobile backbone based ad hoc wireless networks. We show that the joint scheduling and power control problem can be represented as a mixed-integer linear programming model, which is NP-hard. Consequently, we present three heuristic algorithms of polynomial complexity for solving the problem in a practical manner. For small network layouts, our centralized heuristic algorithm is shown to achieve a throughput rate performance that is close to that attained by the optimal scheme. All three of our heuristic algorithms are shown to yield excellent throughput rate performance behavior. The use of power adaptations, when compared with fixed transmit power operations, leads to enhanced throughput rate performance while also lowering communications energy consumption levels. Comparisons with LTE MBMS over single frequency network based schemes have shown our algorithms to offer enhanced spectral efficiency performance, while providing high client coverage.