Exploiting Double Opportunities for Latency-Constrained Content Propagation in Wireless Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on a mobile wireless network comprising a powerful communication center and a multitude of mobile users. We investigate the propagation of latency-constrained content in the wireless network characterized by heterogeneous (time-varying and user-dependent) wireless channel conditions, heterogeneous user mobility, and where communication could occur in a hybrid format (e.g., directly from the central controller or by exchange with other mobiles in a peer-to-peer manner). We show that exploiting double opportunities, i.e., both time-varying channel conditions and mobility, can result in substantial performance gains. We develop a class of double opportunistic multicast schedulers and prove their optimality in terms of both utility and fairness under heterogeneous channel conditions and user mobility. Extensive simulation results are provided to demonstrate that these algorithms can not only substantially boost the throughput of all users (e.g., by 50% to 150%), but also achieve different consideration of fairness among individual users and groups of users.