Immersive media services, such as augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR)a, 360-degree video, and freeviewpoint video (FVV), are popular today. They require massive data storage, ultra-high computing power, and ultra-low latency. It is hard to fulfill these requirements simultaneously in a conventional communication system using a cloud/centralized radio access network (C-RAN). Specifically, due to centralized processing in such a system, the end-to-end latency as well as the burden on the fronthaul network are expected to be high. Fog computing-based radio access networks (F-RAN), in contrast, have been widely considered as an enabler for immersive media. Our contribution in this paper is threefold: First, we propose various service scenarios reflecting the characteristics of immersive media. Second, we identify the technologies that are required to support the proposed service scenarios under F-RAN, and discuss how they can support the proposed scenarios efficiently. Third, we discuss possible research opportunities. a A list of acronyms can be found in Appendix A.

Massive content delivery is in the spotlight of the research community as both data traffic and the number of connected mobile devices are increasing at an incredibly fast pace. The enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) is one of the main use cases for the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G), which focuses on transmitting greater amounts of data at higher data rates than in the previous generations, but also on increasing the area capacity (given in bits per second per square meter) and reliability. However, the broadcast and multicast implementation in 5G and presents several drawbacks such as unexpected disconnections and the lack of device-specific QoS guarantees. As a result, whenever the exact same content is to be delivered to numerous mobile devices simultaneously, this content must be replicated. Hence, the same number of parallel unicast sessions as users are needed. Therefore, novel systems that provide efficient massive content delivery and reduced energy consumption are needed. In this paper, we present a network-coded cooperation (NCC) protocol for efficient massive content delivery and the analytical model that describes its behavior. The NCC protocol combines the benefits of cooperative architectures known as mobile clouds (MCs) with Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC). Our results show the benefits of our NCC protocol when compared to the establishment of numerous parallel unicast sessions are threefold: offload data traffic from the cellular link, reduce the energy consumption at the cooperating users, and provide throughput gains when the cellular bandwidth is insufficient.

The continuous increase of mobile data traffic calls for the design of energy-efficient content distribution mechanisms, to be incorporated in the fifth generation of mobile networks, 5G. One of the biggest concerns of the companies and the research community is to reduce the energy consumption in both the user equipments (UEs) and the network equipment. In this paper, we present a novel content distribution framework called Network-Coded Cooperative (NCC) Networks, which benefits from the interplay between mobile clouds (MC) and Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) to reduce the overall energy consumption in the devices that take part in the communication. This novel framework leads to reduced energy consumption by offloading the cellular interface to a link with greater energy efficiency, for instance, WiFi, within the mobile small cell. We evaluate the performance of our framework analytically and in practical implementation (i.e., testbed) in terms of throughput, energy savings, packet decoding ratio, latency, and synchronicity. In comparison to the conventional content distribution system, for the case of four users, the analytical model and the testbed implementation show energy savings of more than 12% and 8%, respectively. Furthermore, network usage is reduced, losses are neutralized, and the content is synchronously distributed to all users.

Cellular networks are undergoing a major shift in their deployment and optimization. Regardless the deployment of LTE led to an overall performance increase in cellular networks, disseminating data to multiple users inside a cell is still under development. This dissemination is currently achieved via unicast connections, which is inefficient in terms of throughput and power consumption because the antenna is sending duplicated data to co-located users. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) proposed a new standard to be able to multicast and broadcast information over cellular networks. However, different studies stated that this solution might have problems related to the spectrum, and new multicasting alternatives which provide better performance have appeared. Since these new alternatives came up, a race for the control of cellular multicast/broadcast has started. In this paper, we collect, analyze and compare the leading technologies that enable the system to efficiently disseminate data over cellular networks, and conclude by indicating which ones are the most likely to succeed.