Cluster-Based Multicast Transmission for Device-to-Device (D2D) Communication

The development of the storage capacity and electricity of handheld devices makes it possible to share multimedia data (e.g. video) through Device-to-Device (D2D) communication. In this paper, we present a cluster-based multicast transmission method for D2D communication with the target of decreasing the data distribution time. We consider the users who store multimedia data serve as cluster head (CH) and distribute data to the users around them in D2D multicast mode. The CHs and users in the system compose different clusters and there is only one CH in a cluster. We derive out outage capacity of a single cluster and establish a clustering selection model for the whole system. Since the clustering selection is a non-convex problem, we propose a practical clustering strategy with theoretical analysis using game theory. Simulation results show that the clustering strategy lowers the average transmission time effectively and applies to the situation of high user density.