A Joint Solution to Scheduling and Power Control for Multicasting in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

This paper jointly addresses the problem of power control and scheduling in ad hoc networks supporting multicast traffic. First, we present a distributed algorithm which, given the set of multicast transmitters and their corresponding receivers, provides an optimal solution to the power control problem, if there is any. The transmit power levels obtained by solving the optimization problem minimize the network power expenditure while meeting the requirements on the SINR at the receivers. Whenever no optimal solution can be found for the given set of multicast transmitters, we introduce a joint scheduling and power control algorithm which eliminates the strong interferers, thus allowing the other transmitters to solve the power control problem. The algorithm can be implemented in a distributed manner. Although the proposed scheme provides a suboptimal solution, simulation results show that the obtained solution is close to the global optimum, when it exists. When instead there is no optimal solution, our algorithm allows for a high number of successful multicast transmissions.