Game-theoretic Resource Allocation Methods for Device-to-Device (D2D) Communication

Device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular networks allows mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to use the licensed spectrum allocated to cellular services for direct peer-to-peer transmission. D2D communication can use either one-hop transmission (i.e., in D2D direct communication) or multi-hop cluster-based transmission (i.e., in D2D local area networks). The D2D devices can compete or cooperate with each other to reuse the radio resources in D2D networks. Therefore, resource allocation and access for D2D communication can be treated as games. The theories behind these games provide a variety of mathematical tools to effectively model and analyze the individual or group behaviors of D2D users. In addition, game models can provide distributed solutions to the resource allocation problems for D2D communication. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the applications of game-theoretic models to study the radio resource allocation issues in D2D communication. The article also outlines several key open research directions.Comment: Accepted. IEEE Wireless Comms Mag. 201

Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for Device-to-Device Underlay Communication

Device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular networks is expected to bring significant benefits for utilizing resources, improving user throughput and extending battery life of user equipments. However, the allocation of radio and power resources to D2D communication needs elaborate coordination, as D2D communication can cause interference to cellular communication. In this paper, we study joint channel and power allocation to improve the energy efficiency of user equipments. To solve the problem efficiently, we introduce an iterative combinatorial auction algorithm, where the D2D users are considered as bidders that compete for channel resources, and the cellular network is treated as the auctioneer. We also analyze important properties of D2D underlay communication, and present numerical simulations to verify the proposed algorithm.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Distributed power allocation for D2D communications underlaying/overlaying OFDMA cellular networks

The implementation of device-to-device (D2D) underlaying or overlaying pre-existing cellular networks has received much attention due to the potential of enhancing the total cell throughput, reducing power consumption and increasing the instantaneous data rate. In this paper we propose a distributed power allocation scheme for D2D OFDMA communications and, in particular, we consider the two operating modes amenable to a distributed implementation: dedicated and reuse modes. The proposed schemes address the problem of maximizing the users' sum rate subject to power constraints, which is known to be nonconvex and, as such, extremely difficult to be solved exactly. We propose here a fresh approach to this well-known problem, capitalizing on the fact that the power allocation problem can be modeled as a potential game. Exploiting the potential games property of converging under better response dynamics, we propose two fully distributed iterative algorithms, one for each operation mode considered, where each user updates sequentially and autonomously its power allocation. Numerical results, computed for several different user scenarios, show that the proposed methods, which converge to one of the local maxima of the objective function, exhibit performance close to the maximum achievable optimum and outperform other schemes presented in the literature

Review on Radio Resource Allocation Optimization in LTE/LTE-Advanced using Game Theory

Recently, there has been a growing trend toward ap-plying game theory (GT) to various engineering fields in order to solve optimization problems with different competing entities/con-tributors/players. Researches in the fourth generation (4G) wireless network field also exploited this advanced theory to overcome long term evolution (LTE) challenges such as resource allocation, which is one of the most important research topics. In fact, an efficient de-sign of resource allocation schemes is the key to higher performance. However, the standard does not specify the optimization approach to execute the radio resource management and therefore it was left open for studies. This paper presents a survey of the existing game theory based solution for 4G-LTE radio resource allocation problem and its optimization

A Game-Theoretic Approach to Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation in Device-to-Device Underlay Communications

Despite the numerous benefits brought by Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, the introduction of D2D into cellular networks poses many new challenges in the resource allocation design due to the co-channel interference caused by spectrum reuse and limited battery life of User Equipments (UEs). Most of the previous studies mainly focus on how to maximize the Spectral Efficiency (SE) and ignore the energy consumption of UEs. In this paper, we study how to maximize each UE's Energy Efficiency (EE) in an interference-limited environment subject to its specific Quality of Service (QoS) and maximum transmission power constraints. We model the resource allocation problem as a noncooperative game, in which each player is self-interested and wants to maximize its own EE. A distributed interference-aware energy-efficient resource allocation algorithm is proposed by exploiting the properties of the nonlinear fractional programming. We prove that the optimum solution obtained by the proposed algorithm is the Nash equilibrium of the noncooperative game. We also analyze the tradeoff between EE and SE and derive closed-form expressions for EE and SE gaps.Comment: submitted to IET Communications. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1405.1963, arXiv:1407.155

Joint optimization of transmission-order selection and channel allocation for bidirectional wireless links-part II: algorithms

This is the second in a two-part series of papers on transmission order (TO) optimization in the presence of channel allocation (CA), i.e., joint optimization of the TO selection and CA problem, for interfering bidirectional wireless links. Part I of this paper thoroughly analyzes the joint optimization problem from a game theoretic perspective for a general deterministic setting. Here in Part II, we present novel distributed and centralized CA-TO algorithms, together with their performance analysis, for Device-to-Device (D2D) communications underlaying cellular networks based on the findings in Part I of this paper. Here, TO is a novel dimension for optimization. In Part II, we propose and analyze novel two distributed and one centralized joint CA-TO algorithms. Our investigations show that: i) our algorithms contain many of the existing TO algorithms and CA algorithms as its special cases and can thus be considered as a general framework for the joint CA and TO optimization. The computer simulations for TDD-based D2D communications underlaying cellular network show that the proposed distributed and centralized joint CA-TO algorithms remarkably outperform the reference algorithms.IEEE Communications Societ

Joint Spectrum and Power Allocation for D2D Communications Underlaying Cellular Networks

This paper addresses the joint spectrum sharing and power allocation problem for device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaying a cellular network (CN). In the context of orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access systems, with the uplink resources shared with D2D links, both centralized and decentralized methods are proposed. Assuming global channel state information (CSI), the resource allocation problem is first formulated as a nonconvex optimization problem, which is solved using convex approximation techniques. We prove that the approximation method converges to a suboptimal solution and is often very close to the global optimal solution. On the other hand, by exploiting the decentralized network structure with only local CSI at each node, the Stackelberg game model is then adopted to devise a distributed resource allocation scheme. In this game-theoretic model, the base station (BS), which is modeled as the leader, coordinates the interference from the D2D transmission to the cellular users (CUs) by pricing the interference. Subsequently, the D2D pairs, as followers, compete for the spectrum in a noncooperative fashion. Sufficient conditions for the existence of the Nash equilibrium (NE) and the uniqueness of the solution are presented, and an iterative algorithm is proposed to solve the problem. In addition, the signaling overhead is compared between the centralized and decentralized schemes. Finally, numerical results are presented to verify the proposed schemes. It is shown that the distributed scheme is effective for the resource allocation and could protect the CUs with limited signaling overhead