Scheduling multicast traffic with deadlines in wireless networks

We consider the problem of transmitting multicast flows with hard deadlines over unreliable wireless channels. Every user in the network subscribes to several multicast flows, and requires a minimum throughput for each subscribed flow to meet the QoS constraints. The network controller schedules the transmissions of multicast traffic based on the instant feedback from the users. We characterize the multicast throughput region by analyzing its boundary points, each of which is the solution to a finite-horizon dynamic programming problem over an exponentially large state space. Using backward induction and interchange arguments, we show that the dynamic programming problems are solved by greedy policies that maximize the immediate weighted sum throughput in every slot. Furthermore, we develop a dynamic throughput-optimal policy that achieves any feasible throughput vector by tracking the running performance received by the users.