Reduced Power Multi-Cell Multicast Transmission

Future 5G networks will require the reduction of the energy consumption despite the increase of connected devices and data traffic. This paper focuses on an efficient coordinated multicast transmission in Ultra Dense Networks. In particular, a new iterative algorithm is proposed, whose goal is the minimization of the total transmitted power while guaranteeing a minimum received signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratio to all users belonging to the multicast group. Small cells are opportunistically activated, using adaptive transmission power and beamforming weights, to increase the efficiency of the radiated power. The effectiveness of the proposed method is proven in terms of transmitted power and energy efficiency in comparison with different benchmark solutions.