Dynamic multicast link selections for buffer‐aided relaying networks

The management of small cell is considered a key point in next‐generation cellular networks for providing higher data rates, and the relay nodes are expected to be useful to improve the coverage area. Moreover, multicast services have gained importance to disseminate common data to subscribers. The use of buffer‐aided relay for multicast communications is analysed in the paper, and different policies to perform the optimal link selections are compared. These policies are based on the knowledge of the instantaneous link quality indicators as well as the status of the relay buffer and dynamically select the better link according to a suitable probabilistic criterion by improving the aggregate multicast flows. The parameters of these multicast policies are optimized via a Markov chain theoretical framework. The performance for all the proposed methods is analytically derived and validated through computer simulations conducted in different multicast scenarios. The advantages of the proposed schemes are pointed out in terms of multicast throughput, buffer occupancy for different buffer and multicast group size. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.