Multi-Quality Multicast Beamforming With Scalable Video Coding

In this paper, we consider multi-quality multicast beamforming of a video stream from a multi-antenna base station to multiple single-antenna users receiving different qualities of the same video stream, via scalable video coding (SVC). Leveraging the layered structure of SVC and exploiting superposition coding as well as successive interference cancellation, we propose a layer-based multi-quality multicast beamforming scheme. To reduce the computational complexity, we also propose a quality-based multi-quality multicast beamforming scheme, which further utilizes the layered structure of SVC and quality information of all users. Under each scheme, for given quality requirements of all users, we formulate the corresponding optimal beamforming design as a non-convex power minimization problem, and obtain a globally optimal solution for a class of special cases as well as a locally optimal solution for the general case. Then, we show that the minimum total transmission power of the layer-based power minimization problem is the same as that of the quality-based power minimization problem, although the latter incurs a lower computational complexity. Next, we consider the optimal joint layer selection and quality-based multi-quality multicast beamforming design to maximize the total utility representing the satisfaction with the received video quality for all users under a given maximum transmission power budget, which is NP-hard in general. Based on the optimal solution of the quality-based power minimization problem, we develop a greedy algorithm to obtain a near optimal solution. Finally, numerical results show that the proposed solutions achieve better performance than existing solutions.