Analytic hierarchy process in load balancing for the multicast and unicast mixed services in LTE

In the LTE networks, the multicast services can be transmitted by single frequency network (SFN) mode and point-to-multipoint (PTM) mode, and the unicast services are delivered with point-to-point (PTP) mode. To avoid the network congestion in the LTE networks with the multicast and unicast mixed services, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in load balancing is proposed to minimize the demanded radio resources of the maximum load cell. The system model of the demanded radio resources in the maximum load cell is based on AHP. For the same multicast service, the AHP calculates the weight of the demanded radio resources with the three transmission modes of SFN, PTM and PTP. Then the selecting problem of the transmission mode is solved by means of simulated annealing (SA) heuristics. It selects the optimal mode between SFN and PTM for the multicast services. Simulation results show that the proposed AHP in load balancing achieves less demanded radio resources of the maximum load cell than SFN mode for all the multicast services.