Multicast vs Multiple Unicast Scheduling in High-Speed Cellular Networks

Packet scheduling is one of the key features in data-oriented radio interfaces of cellular networks like HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access). It has been primarily designed for unicast applications. Nevertheless, unicast may not optimise the resource usage when the same content has to be transmitted to several users in the same cell. In this paper, we compare the performance of multicast and unicast scheduling considering both a theoretical generic system and an HSDPA system. We prove the benefit of deploying multicast which is found to have merits when the average channel quality is good enough. Results show that the better the average channel quality is, the more users are allowed to receive the service simultaneously.