Joint resource optimization for nonorthogonal multiple access-enhanced scalable video coding multicast in unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted radio-access networks

A joint resource-optimization scheme is investigated for nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-enhanced scalable video coding (SVC) multicast in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted radio-access networks (RANs). This scheme allows a ground base station and UAVs to simultaneously multicast successive video layers in SVC with successive interference cancellation in NOMA. A video quality-maximization problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem to determine the UAV deployment and association, RAN spectrum allocation for multicast groups, and UAV transmit power. The optimization problem is decoupled into the UAV deployment-association, spectrum-partition, and UAV transmit-power-control subproblems. A heuristic strategy is designed to determine the UAV deployment and association patterns. An upgraded knapsack algorithm is developed to solve spectrum partition, followed by fast UAV power fine-tuning to further boost the performance. The simulation results confirm that the proposed scheme improves the average peak signal-to-noise ratio, aggregate video-reception rate, and spectrum utilization over various baselines.