Adaptive layered coding based energy efficient multicast transmission scheme over wireless access networks

In this paper, we consider both 1) an non-layered coding and 2) a layered coding based (i.e., scalable video coding based) multicast transmission. Specifically, the non-layered coding based multicast transmission guarantees fair services over all users in multicast group (MGroup), however it might require much power consumption to support the fair service of the worst channel condition user. On the other hands, the layered coding based multicast transmission has a chance to reduce the transmission power since each user receives different quality of services according to its channel condition. For instance, the worst channel user only needs to receive a minimum quality of service with low data rate. Therefore, through this difference from two approaches, we first provide a rigorous analysis about how these two schemes impact on the multicast energy efficiency according to various parameters (e.g., the number of users in MGroup, cell coverage etc). Furthermore, we present the novel hybrid approach, which adaptively selects between the non-layered coding and layered coding based multicast according to multicast energy efficiency. Detailed numerical results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme. This novel energy related study for multicast transmission provides an important insight for energy efficient multicast transmission design in the future transmission technologies.