Coverage estimation of multicast OFDM systems based on stochastic geometry

International audience—Quality of service has become crucial in wireless communications, due to the high data rates needed to provide multimedia services with sufficient quality. In this sense, the integration of OFDM in wireless technologies has made it possible to grant reliable communications, reducing the effects of attenuation and multipath propagation that degrades the services in environments where the devices are located. This problem may become even more important if, as it is expected, the classical broadcast TV is left to the wireless network operators, in order to recover the frequencies that are currently used for this service. This paper aims to provide efficient tools to estimate the coverage of an OFDM transmission system using stochastic geometry and information theory to model the capacity of a cell when users are known to the transmitter (multicast situation). We consider that users are distributed uniformly over a fixed radius ball from the base stations. We derive the equations and develop simulations to model the distribution of channel capacity to ensure a certain quality of service. Our results indicate that for a user, on average, wireless multicast can be improved by 20% compared to classical broadcast