Empirical Evaluation of Superposition Coded Multicasting for Scalable Video

In this paper we investigate cross-layer superposition coded multicast (SCM). Previous studies have proven its effectiveness in exploiting better channel capacity and service granularities via both analytical and simulation approaches. However, it has never been practically implemented using a commercial 4G system. This paper demonstrates our prototype in achieving the SCM using a standard 802.16 based testbed for scalable video transmissions. In particular, to implement the superposition coded (SPC) modulation, we take advantage a novel software approach, namely logical SPC (L-SPC), which aims to mimic the physical layer superposition coded modulation. The emulation results show improved throughput comparing with generic multicast method.