Modeling, Analysis, and Optimization of Multicast Device-to-Device Transmissions

Multicast device-to-device (D2D) transmission is important for applications like local file transfer in commercial networks and is also a required feature in public safety networks. In this paper we propose a tractable baseline multicast D2D model, and use it to analyze important multicast metrics like the coverage probability, mean number of covered receivers and throughput. In addition, we examine how the multicast performance would be affected by certain factors like dynamics (due to e.g., mobility) and network assistance. Take the mean number of covered receivers as an example. We find that simple repetitive transmissions help but the gain quickly diminishes as the number of repetitions increases. Meanwhile, dynamics and network assistance (i.e., allowing the network to relay the multicast signals) can help cover more receivers. We also explore how to optimize multicasting, e.g. by choosing the optimal multicast rate and the optimal number of retransmission times.