Adaptive multicast with power and rate control over fading channels in mobile wireless networks

We propose a power and rate adaptation scheme for multicastings in wireless networks by taking advantage of the broadcast nature of wireless channels. Specifically, the proposed scheme aims at achieving high system goodput by dynamically allocating the transmit power and data transmission rate jointly based on all multicast receivers's channel state information (CSI). Formulating the multicast goodput maximization problem to derive the rate and power adaptation policy, we observe that this goodput maximization is a non-concave optimization problem. By identifying the fact that the optimal power policy has the waterfilling form, and introducing the concept of effective marginal goodput gain, we convert the original goodput maximization into an equivalent concave optimization problem, and then obtain its optimal solution. Also presented are the simulation analyses which show the performance improvement gained by our developed optimal power and rate adaptation policy.