An efficient wireless resource management scheme to support handoff data recovery in packet-switched cellular multicast networks

To support data transfer reliability similar to that of a fixed multicast network, migrating terminals in a packet-switched cellular wireless multicast network supporting reliable multicast data transfer need to recover lost data during handoffs before they can merge into the respective multicast groups in the new cells. The multicast groups in packet-switched wireless networks typically share resources on a statistical multiplexed basis. To minimize impact on other terminals, this paper proposes to allow part of a multicast group's assigned bandwidth to be shared by the handoff terminals for transient data recovery using the proposed Weighted Fair Share (WFS) method with optimal weight selection. Handoff terminals are admitted into the new cell using the proposed Multicast Connection Admission Control (MCAC) scheme. These methods together constitute the Fair and Efficient Wireless Multicast resource management Scheme (FEWMS) presented in this paper. Under FEWMS, a migrating terminal can quickly recover lost data and merge into the existing multicast group during a handoff. Simulations using self-similar traffic sources show that the proposed method reduces the handoff failure probability of migrating terminals and the average packet delay of the multicast group, and increases the overall system throughput, compared with an existing proposal. Evaluations of different performance measures show that the system throughput does not give a complete picture of the system performance, as different resource management schemes may have substantial impact on other performance measures such as average delay and handoff failure probability.