Performance effectiveness of using micro base stations for resilient LTE multicast networking

Efficient downlink multicasting of critical messages aiming at global coverage is of essential importance in public safety and multimedia cellular networks. In this paper, we first determine the extent of throughput rate degradation incurred in a cellular network system under the failure of a macro base station (MBS) node. Our objective is to determine whether the placement of micro BS (mBS) nodes can enhance the performance of such a failed system configuration. We assume base station nodes to coordinate their multicast packet transmission operations by using adaptive rate coloring oriented scheduling algorithms. In particular, TDMA schedules with reuse levels of 1, 3, 4 or 7 are considered. Under the failure of an MBS node, neighboring macro and/or micro base station nodes coordinate their operations to re-regulate multicast transmissions through re-setting of the transmission schedules and code rates. We show that the deployment of mBS nodes to supplement the use of MBS nodes is especially effective for multicast packet distributions when the macro base station layout is sparser.