Multicast Resource Allocation Enhanced by Channel State Feedbacks for Multiple Scalable Video Coding Streams in LTE Networks

The growing demand for mobile multicast services, such as Internet Protocol television (IPTV) and video streaming, requires effective radio resource management (RRM) to handle traffic with strict quality-of-service constraints over Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and beyond systems. Special care is needed to limit system performance degradation when multiple multicast streams are simultaneously transmitted. To this aim, this paper proposes an RRM policy based on a subgrouping technique for the delivery of scalable multicast video flows in a cell. Our proposal enhances the legacy multicast transmission over LTE systems by exploiting multiuser diversity and the users' channel quality feedbacks. Moreover, it is designed to take advantage of the frequency selectivity in the subgroup formation. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, which outperforms existing approaches from the literature. It succeeds in achieving higher spectral efficiency and guaranteeing adequate video quality to all multicast receivers and improved quality to those with good channel conditions.