Time slot assignment in TDM multicast switching systems

The time slot assignment problem is studied in time-division multiplexing (TDM) switching systems which can support multicast transmissions. It is shown that this problem is NP-complete, i.e., computationally intractable. Two effective heuristic algorithms are proposed. To evaluate and compare the performance of these algorithms, a lower bound on the solution of this problem is derived and computer simulations are performed. The results of simulations show that the solutions generated by these heuristic algorithms are close to this lower bound on the average