Optimal Popularity-based Transmission Range Selection for D2D-supported Content Delivery

TL;DR

This paper proposes an analytical model for optimal D2D transmission range selection in content delivery, significantly reducing energy consumption by considering content popularity and delay tolerance.

Contribution

It introduces a model for selecting maximum D2D transmission range based on content parameters, improving energy efficiency over uniform strategies.

Findings

Energy consumption reduced by 30% to 55% with the proposed method.

Analytical model accurately estimates energy savings for small delay tolerances.

Simulation results validate the effectiveness of popularity-aware transmission range selection.

Abstract

Considering device-to-device (D2D) wireless links as a virtual extension of 5G (and beyond) cellular networks to deliver popular contents has been proposed as an interesting approach to reduce energy consumption, congestion, and bandwidth usage at the network edge. In the scenario of multiple users in a region independently requesting some popular content, there is a major potential for energy consumption reduction exploiting D2D communications. In this scenario, we consider the problem of selecting the maximum allowed transmission range (or equivalently the maximum transmit power) for the D2D links that support the content delivery process. We show that, for a given maximum allowed D2D energy consumption, a considerable reduction of the cellular infrastructure energy consumption can be achieved by selecting the maximum D2D transmission range as a function of content class parameters such as popularity and delay-tolerance, compared to a uniform selection across different content classes. Specifically, we provide an analytical model that can be used to estimate the energy consumption (for small delay tolerance) and thus to set the optimal transmission range. We validate the model via simulations and study the energy gain that our approach allows to obtain. Our results show that the proposed approach to the maximum D2D transmission range selection allows a reduction of the overall energy consumption in the range of 30% to 55%, compared to a selection of the maximum D2D transmission range oblivious to popularity and delay tolerance.