A Low-Complexity Resource Allocation Algorithm for Multicast Service Delivery in OFDMA Networks

Allocating and managing radio resources to multicast transmissions in orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems is the challenging research issue addressed by this paper. A subgrouping technique, which divides the subscribers into subgroups according to the experienced channel quality, is considered to overcome the throughput limitations of conventional multicast data delivery schemes. A low complexity algorithm, designed to work with different resource allocation strategies, is also proposed to reduce the computational complexity of the subgroup formation problem. Simulation results, carried out by considering the Long Term Evolution system based on OFDMA, testify the effectiveness of the proposed solution, which achieves a near-optimal performance with a limited computational load for the system.