Random Linear Network Coding for 5G Mobile Video Delivery

An exponential increase in mobile video delivery will continue with the demand for higher resolution, multi-view and large-scale multicast video services. Novel fifth generation (5G) 3GPP New Radio (NR) standard will bring a number of new opportunities for optimizing video delivery across both 5G core and radio access networks. One of the promising approaches for video quality adaptation, throughput enhancement and erasure protection is the use of packet-level random linear network coding (RLNC). In this review paper, we discuss the integration of RLNC into the 5G NR standard, building upon the ideas and opportunities identified in 4G LTE. We explicitly identify and discuss in detail novel 5G NR features that provide support for RLNC-based video delivery in 5G, thus pointing out to the promising avenues for future research.Comment: Invited paper for Special Issue "Network and Rateless Coding for Video Streaming" - MDPI Informatio

Area Formation and Content Assignment for LTE Broadcasting

Broadcasting and multicasting services in LTE networks are shaping up to be an effective way to provide popular content. A key requirement is that cells are aggregated into areas where a tight time synchronization among transmissions is enforced, so as to broadcast the same radio resources. Our paper addresses a facet of LTE broadcasting that has so far received little attention: the creation of broadcasting areas and the assignment of content to them in order to efficiently exploit radio resources and satisfy user requests. Our original clustering approach, named Single-Content Fusion, achieves these goals by initially aggregating cells into single-content areas and maximizing cell similarity in content interests. Aggregated areas are then merged into multiple-content areas by virtue of similar spatial coverage. We show the validity of our solution pointing out the advantages it provides in comparison to other approaches. We also discuss the impact of various system factors (e.g., number of served users, broadcast data rate, area size) and the scalability of our proposal in large, realistic scenarios with both static and time-varying user interest

Sleep Period Optimization Model For Layered Video Service Delivery Over eMBMS Networks

Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) and the evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast System (eMBMS) are the most promising technologies for the delivery of highly bandwidth demanding applications. In this paper we propose a green resource allocation strategy for the delivery of layered video streams to users with different propagation conditions. The goal of the proposed model is to minimize the user energy consumption. That goal is achieved by minimizing the time required by each user to receive the broadcast data via an efficient power transmission allocation model. A key point in our system model is that the reliability of layered video communications is ensured by means of the Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) approach. Analytical results show that the proposed resource allocation model ensures the desired quality of service constraints, while the user energy footprint is significantly reduced.Comment: Proc. of IEEE ICC 2015, Selected Areas in Communications Symposium - Green Communications Track, to appea

Point-to-Multipoint Communication Enablers for the Fifth Generation of Wireless Systems

(c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.[EN] 3GPP has enhanced the point-to-multipoint (PTM) communication capabilities of 4G LTE in all releases since the adoption of eMBMS in Release-9. Recent enhancements cover not only television services, but also critical machine-type and vehicular communications, following the backward-compatibility design philosophy of LTE. This article discusses the opportunity in the design and standardization of 5G to break with the existing paradigm for PTM transmissions in 4G LTE, where broadcast PTM transmissions were initially conceived as an add-on and pre-positioned service. 5G brings the opportunity to incorporate PTM capabilities as built-in delivery features from the outset, integrating point-to-point and PTM modes under one common framework and enabling dynamic use of PTM to maximize network and spectrum efficiency. This approach will open the door to completely new levels of network management and delivery cost efficiency. The article also discusses the implications of PTM for network slicing to customize and optimize network resources on a common 5G infrastructure to accommodate different use cases and services taking into account user densityThis work was supported in part by the European Commission under the 5G-PPP project Broadcast and Multicast Communication Enablers for the Fifth-(H2020-ICT-2016-2 call, grant number 761498). The views expressed in this contribution are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the project.Generation of Wireless Systems 5G-XcastGomez-Barquero, D.; Navratil, D.; Appleby, S.; Stagg, M. (2018). Point-to-Multipoint Communication Enablers for the Fifth Generation of Wireless Systems. IEEE Communications Standards Magazine. 2(1):53-59. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOMSTD.2018.170006953592

Global Throughput Maximization of a Hybrid Unicast-Broadcast Network for Linear Services

International audienceAn exponential growth of the mobile data traffic is expected in future networks. The reason of this growth is related to the increasing popularity of linear services such as mobile TV, live and sports events, which may lead to the delivery of the same contents to a large audience. Recent studies have shown that network cooperation is a promising candidate to deal with such an issue. This paper investigates, from a planning perspective, the optimization of a hybrid unicast/broadcast network for linear services. We introduce an analytical approach with the aim of stating an optimization problem on the hybrid network configuration, namely in terms of the sharing between the unicast and broadcast modes to deliver a particular service. We show by simulation the existence of an optimal operation point which leads to the maximization of the overall throughput of the hybrid network under the constraint of a minimum service success rate

Two-Layered Superposition of Broadcast/Multicast and Unicast Signals in Multiuser OFDMA Systems

We study optimal delivery strategies of one common and $K$ independent messages from a source to multiple users in wireless environments. In particular, two-layered superposition of broadcast/multicast and unicast signals is considered in a downlink multiuser OFDMA system. In the literature and industry, the two-layer superposition is often considered as a pragmatic approach to make a compromise between the simple but suboptimal orthogonal multiplexing (OM) and the optimal but complex fully-layered non-orthogonal multiplexing. In this work, we show that only two-layers are necessary to achieve the maximum sum-rate when the common message has higher priority than the $K$ individual unicast messages, and OM cannot be sum-rate optimal in general. We develop an algorithm that finds the optimal power allocation over the two-layers and across the OFDMA radio resources in static channels and a class of fading channels. Two main use-cases are considered: i) Multicast and unicast multiplexing when $K$ users with uplink capabilities request both common and independent messages, and ii) broadcast and unicast multiplexing when the common message targets receive-only devices and $K$ users with uplink capabilities additionally request independent messages. Finally, we develop a transceiver design for broadcast/multicast and unicast superposition transmission based on LTE-A-Pro physical layer and show with numerical evaluations in mobile environments with multipath propagation that the capacity improvements can be translated into significant practical performance gains compared to the orthogonal schemes in the 3GPP specifications. We also analyze the impact of real channel estimation and show that significant gains in terms of spectral efficiency or coverage area are still available even with estimation errors and imperfect interference cancellation for the two-layered superposition system