Multi-Path mmWave Cooperative Communications
for Delivering Multimedia Resources
Linghui Pan, Rong Zhou, Jiaqi Chen, Xiaohu Ge, Tao Han
School of Electronic Information and Communications
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Email: lhpan@hust.edu.cn, zhourong950614@126.com, {chenjq_hust, xhge, hantao}@mail.hust.edu.cn
Abstract—With the explosive growth of mobile traffic, espe-
cially the multimedia traffic, the fifth-generation (5G) wireless
networks are expected to not only reduce delay effectively but also
increase the network throughput significantly, while guaranteeing
the quality of service (QoS) for wireless multimedia traffics. Based
on the millimeter wave (mmWave) multi-hop relay technology,
latency, network throughput and energy efficiency are analyzed
in 5G network scenarios for delivering multimedia resources in
this paper. Furthermore, the multi-path mmWave cooperative
communication (MMCC) scheme is developed to facilitate the
multimedia resources delivering in 5G heterogeneous networks.
Simulation results indicate that a higher network throughput is
achieved by adopting the proposed MMCC scheme, compared
with the existing conventional single-hop sub-6 GHz communi-
cation scheme.
I. INTRODUCTION
Information and communication technology industry has
witnessed a massive development in service-oriented revolu-
tion. Smart mobile devices with the capabilities of advanced
processing, communication and display, have a trend to be
more affordable. Moreover, many kinds of multimedia ser-
vices, such as mobile television (TV), high-definition (HD)
video, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) etc.,
are increasingly launched. However, services based on the
interactive multimedia such as HDTV and three dimensional
(3D) TV, are seriously challenged to process and deliver
the hundreds of megabytes of contents in one second [1].
MmWave spectrum is emerging as a suitable candidate to
enhance the spectral efficiency, which promotes the develop-
ment of gigabits user multimedia services in future cellular
networks [2]. It is estimated that 75% of the world’s mobile
traffic will be the multimedia traffic by 2020 [3]. The strict
requirements of the delay and network throughput for the
multimedia services are emerging as an inevitable challenge
in the future 5G networks.
The key point for wireless multimedia services is to en-
able timely multimedia data transmissions, while guaranteeing
specified delay bounds [4]. Some research works have been
done to improve throughput and reduce delay. For instance, T.
Hori et al. [5] proposed a two-step radio resource allocation
algorithm for the downlink of a long term evolution (LTE)
network, which achieves a high-level of quality of experience
(QoE) and a higher throughput compared with the conven-
tional allocation algorithms. The capacity of large wireless
networks in which the nodes have a general spatial distribution
was investigated and the capacity upper bound and lower
bound were derived [14]. As many multimedia applications
employ transmission control protocol (TCP) to send video
packets, Suherman et al. in [7] proposed a split-routed ac-
knowledgement packet to reduce the acknowledgement delay.
It is a matter of prime importance for 5G wireless networks
to satisfy the demand for higher network throughput, shorter
delay, higher data rate, better user QoS for time-sensitive
multimedia wireless traffics, and increased energy efficiency
in the point of view of green wireless networks [11]. For
instance, the statistical delay-bounded QoS driven green power
allocation scheme as proposed in [8] to maximize the effective
power efficiency over green 5G mobile wireless networks. X.
Ge et al. investigated the impact of small cell BS density
on the backhaul network capacity and energy efficiency of
ultra-dense cellular networks, considering the mmWave com-
munication technology [11]. L. Cheng et al. concentrated on
the localized mobility support in hierarchical wireless sensor
networks (WSNs) by using the proposed seamless streaming
data delivery protocol, where the proposed protocol is efficient
and lightweight for multi-hop cluster-based WSNs with mobile
elements [10]. In terms of minimum energy consumption,
bandwidth efficiency and high quality, a joint time switching
and rate allocation optimization scheme for wireless multime-
dia sensor networks (WMSNs) was studied in [12] to enhance
the performance of WMSNs.
In this paper, a multi-path mmWave cooperative com-
munication (MMCC) scheme is proposed to facilitate the
massive multimedia resources delivering in 5G heterogeneous
networks. The contributions of this work are summarized as
follows.
1) An MMCC scheme is proposed to deliver the large vol-
ume of multimedia resources in 5G network scenarios.
2) The reception delay, network throughput and energy
efficiency are analyzed based on the proposed MMCC
scheme. Numerical results indicate that the gains in
terms of network throughput with the proposed scheme
over that with the existing single-hop sub-6 GHz com-
munications scheme increase signifcantly with respect
to the EDC density.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In
Section II, the system model with a two-tier heterogeneous
cellular network is proposed for multimedia applications in
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