Multicast scheduling algorithm supporting spatial mini-slot reuse for IEEE 802.16 mesh networks

In this paper, we propose a mechanism for multicast data transmission in IEEE 802.16 mesh networks aimed at increasing the throughput by incorporating mini-slot spatial reuse. The proposed mechanism includes two novel algorithms: a source-based multicast tree topology construction algorithm followed by an interference-aware multicast scheduling algorithm. The proposed multicast interference-aware scheduling algorithm can be applied to both source-based and rendezvous-based multicast tree topologies. Results of our simulation study show that in comparison to the mechanism used for the IEEE 802.16´s standard, the proposed multicast tree generation algorithm reduces the number of consumed mini-slots by 64% on average. Moreover, using the proposed interference-aware scheduling algorithm decreases the number of required mini-slots by a further 22% on average. Therefore, the proposed multicast scheduling mechanism shows a higher throughput than the previous approaches and it is more scalable with respect to increasing the number of multicast groups as well as increasing the number of members inside each multicast group.