Multicast partition problem for smart home applications

In smart home, multimedia services can be provided to users, who want to receive multimedia data through mobile phones. Most of multimedia applications are implemented using the streaming technique from contents provider to subscribers. It is important to manage the buffering amount remained in the user side in order to support the adequate quality of video contents and minimize complaints of subscribers due to buffer starvation. In the wireless environment, it is difficult to provide several subscribers with multicast traffic stably, since the data rate which users can receive varies according to the channel state of each user. Therefore, we propose and discuss an efficient usage together with MIU (Multicast In Unicast portion) as well as MIM (Multicast In Multicast portion) in order to maximize the aggregate throughput of users and minimize the starvation duration degrading QoS supported to users. We consider the multicast partitioning problem applying list partitioning algorithm and provide the analytical foundation that the proposed scheme can be evaluated. Simulation results show that proposed model can provide enhanced performance and allowed streaming quality.