Robust Multicast Device-to-Device Communication

Abstract

Device-to-device (D2D) multicast communication can be employed in distributing popular content among similarly interested groups thereby reducing the load on the network. When the network multicasts a requested file to a cluster or group of users, some members of a cluster may not receive the sent data correctly and so may require re-transmission by other selected group members through D2D multicast communication. In analysing D2D communication, the availability of perfect channel information (CSI) is mostly assumed. Hence the need for a channel uncertainty aware D2D multicast communication analysis. In this paper a multicast D2D communication underlaying uplink cellular communication is formulated as a robust optimisation problem that caters for uncertainty in the interference channels between D2D multicast groups within a cell. K-means algorithm is employed to create D2D groups. Using simulations, the impact of factoring in channel uncertainty is demonstrated. The gains of group communication is also shown through simulation as increasing the number of groups provides a pronounced increase in D2D data rate specifically in moving from 2 to 3 groups there is an increase of 2 bps/Hz. Furthermore, the effect of D2D group dimension on the transmission data rate is also shown through the numerical results with a drop of upto 0.5 bps/Hz for a variation of 20 to 60 m.