In multi-cell non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems, designing an appropriate user grouping strategy is an open problem due to diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements and inter-cell interference. In this paper, we exploit both game theory and graph theory to study QoS-aware user grouping strategies, aiming at minimizing power consumption in downlink multi-cell NOMA systems. Under different QoS requirements, we derive the optimal successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding order with inter-cell interference, which is different from existing SIC decoding order of increasing channel gains, and obtain the corresponding power allocation strategy. Based on this, the exact potential game model of the user grouping strategies adopted by multiple cells is formulated. We prove that, in this game, the problem for each player to find a grouping strategy can be converted into the problem of searching for specific negative loops in the graph composed of users. Bellman-Ford algorithm is expanded to find these negative loops. Furthermore, we design a greedy based suboptimal strategy to approach the optimal solution with polynomial time. Extensive simulations confirm the effectiveness of grouping users with consideration of QoS and inter-cell interference, and show that the proposed strategies can considerably reduce total power consumption comparing with reference strategies.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is promising to enable growing video services with requirements of massive traffic and low latency. In this paper, we investigate a novel multi-user NOMA system design for video delivery. Different from data delivery considered in existing NOMA systems, video distortion is taken into consideration for the design and optimization of the proposed scheme. We first propose a cross-layer scalable video delivery scheme over NOMA wireless networks based on given user grouping. By adopting a semi-analytical rate distortion model for encoded video sequences and investigating the physical layer model for the multi-carrier NOMA network, the distortion-aware power allocation problem is formulated with the goal to minimize the system end-to-end distortion with quality-of-service requirements. To solve such a non-convex problem, we design an efficient algorithm by exploiting its hidden monotonic property to approximate the optimal solution. Inspired by the decoding order in NOMA, a fast algorithm is developed by combining water-filling and greedy strategies to further tame the computational complexity. Simulations results have verified the advantages of the proposed cross-layer scheme with distortion-aware power allocation algorithms, against two existing NOMA schemes and an OMA scheme.

Recently, pseudo-analog transmission based on SoftCast has been proposed to improve the received quality of video/image by eliminating the cliff effect in traditional digital transmission. In this paper, we propose a Compressed Pseudo-analog Transmission System (ComPaTS) for remote sensing images over bandwidth-constrained wireless channels. This novel scheme is developed based on the observation that the inherent dropping strategy in pseudo-analog transmission is impractical for remote sensing images in which the transmission bandwidth is generally insufficient. In ComPaTS, to guarantee the content diversity gain under pseudo-analog transmission, block-based Compressive Sensing (CS) is applied to the wavelet domain of each remote sensing image, where the sampling ratio is proportional to the importance of different blocks. The main work of ComPaTS is to leverage the sampling ratio in block-based CS and the resource allocation in pseudo-analog transmission in order to minimize system distortion. Two components of system distortion, i.e., source distortion and channel distortion are analyzed respectively. To characterize the coupling relationship between these two different types of distortion, a joint bandwidth-power distortion optimization problem is formulated. Furthermore, we also propose a two-stage allocation algorithm to solve the problem efficiently. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ComPaTS scheme significantly outperforms reference schemes in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio under different bandwidth-constrained scenarios.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has shown potential for scalable multicast of video data. However, one key drawback for NOMA-based video multicast is the limited number of layers allowed by the embedded successive interference cancellation algorithm, failing to meet satisfaction of heterogeneous receivers. We propose a novel receiver-driven superposed video multicast (Supcast) scheme by integrating Softcast, an analog-like transmission scheme, into the NOMA-based system to achieve high bandwidth efficiency as well as gradual decoding quality proportional to channel conditions at receivers. Although Softcast allows gradual performance by directly transmitting power-scaled transformation coefficients of frames, it suffers performance degradation due to discarding coefficients under insufficient bandwidth and its power allocation strategy cannot be directly applied in NOMA due to interference. In Supcast, coefficients are grouped into chunks, which are basic units for power allocation and superposition scheduling. By bisecting chunks into base-layer chunks and enhanced-layer chunks, the joint power allocation and chunk scheduling is formulated as a distortion minimization problem. A two-stage power allocation strategy and a near-optimal low-complexity algorithm for chunk scheduling based on the matching theory are proposed. Simulation results have shown the advantage of Supcast against Softcast as well as the reference scheme in NOMA under various practical scenarios.

Recently, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been proposed to improve spectral efficiency greatly over conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA). However, it is still challenging to implement NOMA into transmission of video. In this research, we investigate video broadcasting design over NOMA systems. When video transmission is considered, quality of experience (QoE) is a better metric for NOMA design than throughput. Therefore, we design a QoE-driven scalable video broadcasting (SVB) scheme over NOMA systems. To achieve scalable transmission performance, power allocation is optimized among multiple video layers, which are requested by users with different channel conditions. Specifically, we formulate the power allocation problem to maxmize the system overall QoE while guaranteeing the basic service of users. Although this problem is non-convex and discontinuous, an optimal algorithm is proposed based on the hidden monotonicity of the problem. Simulation results show that the proposed SVB scheme over NOMA systems outperforms existing OMA and NOMA based schemes in various broadcast scenarios in terms of QoE.

Recently, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been proposed to achieve higher spectral efficiency over conventional orthogonal multiple access. Although it has the potential to meet increasing demands of video services, it is still challenging to provide high performance video streaming. In this research, we investigate, for the first time, a multi-user NOMA system design for video transmission. Various NOMA systems have been proposed for data transmission in terms of throughput or reliability. However, the perceived quality, or the quality-of-experience of users, is more critical for video transmission. Based on this observation, we design a quality-driven scalable video transmission framework with cross-layer support for multiuser NOMA. To enable low complexity multi-user NOMA operations, a novel user grouping strategy is proposed. The key features in the proposed framework include the integration of the quality model for encoded video with the physical layer model for NOMA transmission, and the formulation of multiuser NOMA-based video transmission as a quality-driven power allocation problem. As the problem is non-concave, a global optimal algorithm based on the hidden monotonic property and a suboptimal algorithm with polynomial time complexity are developed. Simulation results show that the proposed multi-user NOMA system outperforms existing schemes in various video delivery scenarios.

Recently, a novel uncoded transmission system called SoftCast has attracted great interest from academia, which can eliminate the cliff effect in digital transmission. Since the whole system is linear, SoftCast is intrinsically scalable to channel conditions. However, the resolution heterogeneity in the uncoded video broadcast system has not been well studied as far as we know. In this paper, we propose a Spatial Scalability Enabled Soft Video Broadcast (SSESVB) system based on SoftCast, aim to accommodate diverse users with heterogeneous channel conditions and heterogeneous resolutions simultaneously. Existing solutions for the resolution heterogeneity issue are previously designed for digital source coding, which cannot fully exploit performance gains from uncoded transmission. Instead, in the proposed SSESVB system, a novel spatial decomposition method based on linear projection is specially designed for uncoded transmission. Then a power distortion optimization problem is formulated and solved with the goal to minimize the average distortion of multiple users with heterogeneous channel conditions and heterogeneous resolutions. The simulation results demonstrate that SSESVB achieves more than 5.8 dB gain over compared schemes (i.e., SoftCast, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) based method, and Scalable Video Coding (SVC)) in terms of average Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) under heterogeneous scenarios.

In the context of Service Function Chain (SFC), SFC Mapping (SFCM) problem has a decisive impact on the resource utilization efficiency of physical networks, where node resources and link resources are concerned. However, most existing work on the SFCM problem has not taken into account difference in the amount of node resources and link resources. This kind of difference might result in some nodes that cannot be mapped because of insufficient link resources around these nodes. This phenomenon is referred to as resource fragmentation. In this paper, we attempt to improve the resource utilization efficiency by reducing resource fragmentation in physical networks, where SFCM is performed. First and most importantly, we propose a metric called Resource Fragmentation Degree (RFD) to quantify resource fragmentation. The basic idea behind RFD is that the resource availability of a node is determined by the residual link resources around the node. Based on RFD, we formulate the SFCM problem with goal of minimizing resource fragmentation. Furthermore, we also propose an efficient online heuristic to find the optimal mapping strategy. Simulation results show that much more SFC requests can be accepted by reducing resource fragmentation in physical networks and the proposed algorithm achieves more than 25% higher acceptance ratio compared with existing algorithms.