Power Efficient User Pairing for Multicasting in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Heterogeneous wireless networks have been widely studied recently for the potential to accommodate the rapidly growing data demand in wireless networks. In addition to achieving a higher data rate, power efficient transmission is also critical in providing a stable and lasting wireless access. In this work, we study the power efficient user pairing for multicasting in heterogeneous wireless networks. A combination of intelligent cell association and cooperative communications is proposed to minimize the maximum power consumption among the mobile users. Through analysis and simulation, we demonstrate the benefits of efficient cell association as well as the incorporation of cooperative communications. It shows that our proposed power efficient user pairing scheme achieves a near-optimal performance with a low complexity.