Fair Radio Resource Allocation for MIMO OFDM-based Multicast Systems

This paper investigates the problem of resource allocation in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) OFDM-based system, wherein multiple multicast groups exist. Multicasting is a transmission technique which enables a transmitter to communicate via a single wireless link with multiple receivers simultaneously. Moreover, the presence of multiple antennas in both transmitter and receiver enhances significantly the system spectral efficiency. MIMO technology along with multicasting offers major advantages to wireless systems. However, optimum exploitation of these technologies adds significant complexity to the system which makes very difficult any possible practical implementation. Another important issue of such systems is their capacity to ensure to all users a certain level of QoS. To that end, we propose a low complexity fair resource allocation algorithm aiming at ensuring a certain amount of resources to all users when multicasting is applied. Validation of the proposed solution is achieved through extensive simulation and it is compared to other multicast schemes for MIMO systems which exist in literature. Numerical results and complexity analysis show the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.