Opportunistic Multicast Scheduling with Coding in OFDM-Based Wireless Cellular Networks

In this paper, resource allocation problem for multicast service in OFDM-based wireless cellular networks is investigated and a coding-based opportunistic scheduling scheme is proposed. In the proposed scheme, according to frequency resource and time resource, layered coding and erasure-correction coding are adopted, respectively. Layered coding divides the data into base layer and enhancement layer, which transmits the data in different rates to maximize the system capacity; erasure-correction coding compensates for the possible packet loss due to instantaneous channel information. To complete subcarrier allocation and bit loading for the coding-based scheme, a practical algorithm is designed. As only the users' mean channel gains are required, the proposed scheme reduces the overheads required for instantaneous channel information and is suitable for a fast time-varying fading environment. Numerical results show that the coding-based scheme can get significant performance improvement compared with the scheme without coding.