Optimized opportunistic multicast scheduling (OMS) over heterogeneous cellular networks

Optimized opportunistic multicast scheduling (OMS) has been studied previously by the authors for homogeneous cellular networks, where the problem of efficiently transmitting a common set of data from a single base station to multiple users that have identical channel statistics was examined. It has been demonstrated that OMS can achieve significant performance improvement by exploiting the optimal tradeoff between multiuser diversity and multicast gain. In this work, we extend our studies to heterogeneous networks with users subject to different channel statistics. Specifically, we consider a single cell wireless network with users uniformly distributed in a circular region around the base station. Since users with low SNR are the ones that hinder system throughput, we argue that system performance may be predicted by the behavior of users in the outmost ring of the cell, which are approximately homogeneous. Using extreme value theory and results obtained from the homogeneous case, we determine the optimal user selection ratio for a homogeneous ring of users near the edge of the cell and then use it to derive the optimal selection ratio over the entire heterogeneous network. Simulations confirm theoretical results and illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.