Spectrally-Efficient Cooperative Video Delivery in 5G Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets), even in 5G systems, are plagued by the problem of intra cell interference, i.e., a strong interfering transmission from a macro BS (MBS) interferes at all the users associated to the several small cells of the HetNet. This phenomenon may significantly reduce the spectral efficiency. With the dominating presence of bandwidth-hungry video in cellular systems, making the most out of the available spectrum resources is critical for the mobile operators. In this paper, we present a cooperative protocol that can ensure spectral efficient delivery of high quality video in HetNets. The key characteristic is that the transmitted information from a small cell base station is decoded at several users in the small cell when the MBS also transmits. The users that decode act subsequently as relays to the final user. Our novel protocol is supported by a new optimization framework for resource allocation in the HetNet and rate allocation at the video source. Performance results indicate that the presence of users, a previously unexploited dimension in HetNets, offers significant SE gains.