Resource Allocation for 5G D2D Multicast Content Sharing in Social-Aware Cellular Networks

As the traffic of local content sharing grows rapidly, device-to-device multicast (D2MD) is introduced into 5G cellular networks, enabling traffic offloading from base stations to device direct transmissions and improved energy and spectrum efficiency. In the content sharing context, the social attributes of mobile users have special concerns to generate effective D2MD groups and D2MD links, and due to reuse of licensed cellular spectrum, the interference between D2MD groups and cellular users should be carefully mitigated. This article presents a D2MD scheme for content sharing in cellular networks by taking into account social and physical attributes in D2MD cluster formation, and jointly optimizing power and channel allocation among D2MD clusters. Simulation results validate the significant throughput gain for D2MD-based content sharing in 5G cellular networks.