Resource Allocation for Overlapping MBS Zones

Multicast and broadcast service (MBS) is one of the important services for next-generation wireless systems. In WiMAX, the radio resource unit (i.e., time, frequency, code, etc.) for MBS is centralized allocated by an anchor access service network gateway (Anchor ASN-GW). In MBS, a BS can dynamically join or leave an MBS Zone due to the moving of MSs. The Anchor ASNGW must allocate nonoverlapping radio resource units to BSs for delivering different MBS contents in overlapping MBS Zones. This paper presents radio resource allocation and reallocation algorithms to minimize the number of required resource units for overlapping MBS Zones. For a given number of MBS Zones, a resource estimation model is also presented to estimate the average number of radio resource units to be reserved by the ASN-GW. Simulation results showed that the proposed algorithms can reduce the number of reallocations, and, thus, the signaling messages exchanged in the air interface and the core network are minimized. The results also showed that the proposed model can be used as a good reference for the network operator to estimate the average number of required radio resource units for a given number of MBS Zones.