Multicast service delivery solutions in LTE-Advanced systems

Multicast services over Long Term Evolution (LTE) have recently attracted the interest of the research community. Particular attention has been put on handling fairness requirements of multicast users and experienced channel quality. Conventional Multicast Scheme (CMS), Opportunistic Multicast Scheme (OMS), and multicast subgroup formation are the principal policies adopted to address this research issue. Little attention has been given so far to multicarrier systems like LTE-Advanced although the need for solutions appropriate to this system is strongly felt. In this paper we design radio resource management policies for the efficient delivery of multicast services in multicarrier LTE-Advanced systems and show how the relation between fairness and system efficiency can be controlled. Concerning the system resource management, game theoretic bargaining solutions are considered to best model fairness and efficiency (expressed in terms of throughput).