Bandwidth efficient multicast in HetNets

In this paper, we propose a joint network selection and rate selection scheme for the multicasting in heterogeneous networks, with an aim to minimize the overall bandwidth resources consumed by the multicast stream. We first formulate the scheme as a binary integer programming problem, and then derive a computationally efficient Lagrangian heuristic algorithm to solve the problem with the architecture of heterogeneous networks taken into account. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme will cost the minimum system bandwidth compared to other reference schemes.