Resource management scheme for multicasting in orthogonal frequency division multiple access-based single frequency networks

In this study, the authors present a resource allocation scheme that determines both a set of multicast basestations and a transmission scheme minimising the aggregate number of multicast resources in all of the multicast basestations while satisfying the multicast coverage requirement in an orthogonal frequency division multiple access-based single frequency networks (SFNs). In particular, the proposed scheme consists of two phases. In the first phase, a multicast basestation set and a transmission scheme are initially found to minimise the aggregate number of multicast resources. Then, in the second phase, the transmission scheme is adjusted according to the multicast users´ performance reports. In addition, the multicast basestation set is adaptively updated if the aggregate number of multicast resources significantly changes as compared to that after the set was most recently updated. Using computer simulations, the authors demonstrate that the proposed scheme can efficiently utilise the radio resources for multicast transmission.