Journal of High Speed Networks 24 (2018) 147–159 147 DOI 10.3233/JHS-180587 IOS Press Investigation on resource scheduling with coexistence of unicast and multicast services in LTE OFDMA system S. Fouziya Sulthana a,∗ , R. Nakkeeran a , S. Shaffath Hussain Shakir b and A. Rajesh b a Department of Electronics Engineering, Pondicherry University, Puducherry-14, India E-mails: fouziya@pec.edu, nakkeeranpu@gmail.com b School of Electronics Engineering, VIT University, Vellore-14, India E-mails: shafathhusain@gmail.com, rajeshtechece@gmail.com Abstract. Multicasting is an effective method of transmitting the group messages that results in minimal utilization of network resources. But in real scenario, both unicast and multicast services are to be served by the evolved Node B (eNB). So an appropriate resource allocation method should be adopted to satisfy the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of these services. This paper focuses on resource allocation method for Long Term Evolution (LTE) downlink when these services are scheduled by the eNB. To improve the system throughput, an objective function is formulated that maximizes the throughput of both unicast and multicast services. The multicast group is in turn divided into subgroups and the subgrouping allocation is carried out by means of Genetic Algorithm (GA) that aims to maximize the total throughput. It is shown that multicast with subgrouping shows 20% increase in the total throughput and 3% reduction in average delay when compared with combined unicast and conventional multicasting method that uses Least Channel Gain (LCG) user rate for multicast transmission. Keywords: Multicasting, LTE, subgroup, genetic algorithm 1. Introduction The growing demand of various broadband multimedia services like video streaming, interactive gaming and mobile television has drawn great attraction among users. The explosive growth of multicast traffic with various Quality of Service (QoS) requirements is supported by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) through evolved Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (eMBMS) [1]. eMBMS delivers the multicast messages to multiple users simultaneously with a portion of resources required by normal unicast service to those users. It uses the Resource Blocks (RBs) encoded with same Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS). LTE is Internet protocol based architecture that supports variety of applications. It provides flexibility in spec- trum, where the transmission bandwidth can be selected between 1.4 MHz and 20 MHz. The radio base station named evolved Node B (eNB) is incharge of assigning portions of spectrum shared among users. The network architecture of LTE consists of core network called Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and access network called Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (EUTRAN). The available transmission bandwidth is divided into number of RBs in time and frequency domain. A RB is the smallest allocation unit in LTE that can be modulated independently. * Corresponding author. E-mail: fouziya@pec.edu. 0926-6801/18/$35.00 © 2018 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved