A base station (BS) may determine a fixed modulation scheme, a fixed PDU payload size, and a fixed number of PDUs per downlink burst for transmission of multicast data to subscriber stations. The BS may allocate downlink bursts to deliver the multicast data to the subscriber stations via PDUs using the fixed modulation scheme, the fixed PDU payload size, and the fixed number of PDUs per DL burst. A subscriber station (SS) may bypass the processing of multicast frames if the SS does not belong to any multicast groups. An SS may search for multicast connection identifiers (CIDs) in DL MAP IEs in multicast frames if the SS belongs to at least one multicast group. The SS may bypass the parsing of a PDU's MAC header within a corresponding downlink burst in the multicast frame in response to identifying a multicast CID in a DL-MAP IE in a multicast frame.