A METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR OPPORTUNISTIC MULTICASTING WITH CODED SCHEDULING IN WIRELESS NETWORKS

摘要

A method, apparatus and system for opportunistic multicasting are described. In one embodiment, an apparatus for use in a wireless multicast system comprises: a storage to store channel state and/or rate information received from the plurality of receivers; an optional encoder to generate encoding blocks from the original multicast/broadcast content; a transmitter to broadcast information over a broadcast channel to receivers in the plurality of receivers for each transmission time slot; and a controller coupled to the storage and the transmitter to adapt transmission rates of the transmitter to cause the transmitter to transmit at different rates for different transmission time slots, wherein the controller determines a transmission rate of the transmitter that broadcasts the encoded information, based on the channel state information associated with the broadcast channel and received from the plurality of receivers and based on a subset of receivers in the plurality of receivers targeted to reliably receive a broadcast transmission over the broadcast channel during said each transmission time slot.