Abstract
The exploitation of fluctuating channel conditions in link adaption techniques for unicast transmission has been shown to provide large system capacity gains. However, the problem of choosing transmission rates for multicast transmission has not been thoroughly investigated. In this paper, we investigate multicast adaptive techniques for reliable data delivery in GEO satellite networks. An optimal multicast link adaptation is proposed with the aim to maximise terminal throughput whilst increasing resource utilization and fairness in the face of diverse channel conditions. Via simulation results and theoretical analysis, the proposed algorithm has shown to outperform other alternative multicast link adaptation techniques especially when the terminals are in vigorous channel conditions.