  The explosive growth of content-on-the-move, such as video streaming to
mobile devices, has propelled research on multimedia broadcast and multicast
schemes. Multi-rate transmission strategies have been proposed as a means of
delivering layered services to users experiencing different downlink channel
conditions. In this paper, we consider Point-to-Multipoint layered service
delivery across a generic cellular system and improve it by applying different
random linear network coding approaches. We derive packet error probability
expressions and use them as performance metrics in the formulation of resource
allocation frameworks. The aim of these frameworks is both the optimization of
the transmission scheme and the minimization of the number of broadcast packets
on each downlink channel, while offering service guarantees to a predetermined
fraction of users. As a case of study, our proposed frameworks are then adapted
to the LTE-A standard and the eMBMS technology. We focus on the delivery of a
video service based on the H.264/SVC standard and demonstrate the advantages of
layered network coding over multi-rate transmission. Furthermore, we establish
that the choice of both the network coding technique and resource allocation
method play a critical role on the network footprint, and the quality of each
received video layer.
