Antenna Allocation Scheme for Providing Scalable Video Coded Streams Over Multiple-Base-Station Massive MIMO Cellular Networks

Massive MIMO is a promising next-generation wireless access technology. By flexibly assigning different numbers of antennas among connections, the transmission rate can be adjusted according to user requirement and channel conditions. However, providing scalable-video-encoded (SVC) multimedia streams with such a technology is challenging because this cross-layer issue involves each user's allocated antennas as well as the assigned layers. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer scheme called Utility-Based Layer and Antenna Allocation (UB-LAA). Given each base station's available antennas and each user's channel conditions as well as their subscribed SVC stream, UB-LAA decides each layer's serving base station and transmitting antennas to maximize the system's total utility. Through analysis, we prove that this allocation problem is NP-complete, and our polynomial-time heuristic provides a bounded performance difference to the optimum solution. Simulation results indicated that, under various circumstances, UB-LAA flexibly allocates resources to reflect user requirements and channel conditions, and has a performance that is approximate to the optimal solution.