Abstract: As
a promising solution to tackle the network heterogeneity in multicasting, layered
multicast protoclos such as Receiver-driven layered multicast (RLM) and Layered
video multicast with retransmission (LVMR) have been proposed. This paper considers
fairness as well as transmission load in the layered multicasting. Lexicographically
fair bandwidth allocation among multicast receivers is considered under
the constraint of minimum bandwidth requirement and the link capacity of the
network. The problem of transmission load in the layer multicasting due to various
user requirements is also examined by minimizing the number of layers.
The
bandwidth allocation is formulated as a nonlinear integer programming problem.
A dual objective tabu search is proposed to solve the fairness and transmission
load problem in multicast networks. Outstanding performance is obtained by the
proposed tabu search. When the fairness objective is considered, the solution
gap from the optimal solution is less than 2% in problems with 50 virtual sessions.
The complexity of the dual objective largely depends on the weighting factor
of the two objectives. Even in tough cases the proposed tabu search provides
excellent solution the gap of which is within 6% from the optimal solution