Socially-aware and energy-efficient resource allocation and power control for D2D multicast content distribution

Abstract

Nowadays, a significant portion of the base station's traffic is dedicated to the increasing demand for the same multimedia content in local area services. Device-to-device (D2D) multicast communications are considered an effective and practical approach for tackling such a challenge in 4G/5G cellular networks. Due to the limited power source of the devices, this paper aims to jointly maximize their energy efficiency and lifetime while satisfying the quality of service (QoS) and the minimum battery power of users. To accomplish this aim, D2D multicast clusters are first formed considering the information of the physical distance, the social distance, and the energy levels of the devices' batteries. Then, cluster-head selection, power control, and resource allocation are carried out to maximize the product of energy efficiency and lifetime, which converts the multi-objective problem to a single-objective one. This optimization problem is non-convex and nonlinear; thus, it is divided into two convex sub-problems. In the first sub-problem, for each candidate cluster-head and corresponding cellular user, the power allocation is performed to maximize energy efficiency. Then, the resource allocation and the cluster-head selection are performed by solving the second sub-problem using the one-to-one Hungarian matching algorithm to maximize the life-energy efficiency. Results of extensive evaluation show that our proposed scheme improves energy efficiency and increases the cluster-head life in D2D multicast services.