A Blockchain Enhanced Coexistence of Heterogeneous Networks on Unlicensed Spectrum

Due to the forecasted fast increasing cellular traffic and the already highly congested licensed spectrum, it is critical to exploit and utilize the unlicensed spectrum resources for the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond networks. A challenging problem is the coexistence of 5G and other networks with fair, reliable, and efficient sharing of the unlicensed spectrum. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-enhanced distributed spectrum sharing scheme for coexisting multiple operators and multiple WiFi APs. We design a novel lightweight and efficient consensus mechanism, named Proof of Strategy (PoG). In this consensus mechanism, the problem of spectrum sharing is used as a consensus puzzle, and the part of the unlicensed spectrum is used as the ‘fee’ of miners. With such a design, the computing overhead of the consensus process is expected to be reduced significantly. We develop a non-cooperative game to analyze the behavior of the miners and obtain a symmetric Bayesian Nash equilibrium under the uniform distribution of mining cost estimation. It can be found mathematically and experimentally that the strategy of the winner tends to maximize the system revenue by sharing the unlicensed spectrum resource. Furthermore, to reduce the impact of heavy interactions on system throughput, the operation of WiFi APs in the proposed scheme can be adaptively switched between ‘contention mode’ and ‘blockchain mode’ according to the network traffic load. The dynamic behavior is constructed as an evolutionary game, and the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium points are proved by theoretical analysis. Simulations demonstrated the fairness and effectiveness of the proposed blockchain-based scheme and the mode switching method for distributed spectrum sharing by heterogeneous wireless networks

Modeling Profit of Sliced 5G Networks for Advanced Network Resource Management and Slice Implementation

The core innovation in future 5G cellular networksnetwork slicing, aims at providing a flexible and efficient framework of network organization and resource management. The revolutionary network architecture based on slices, makes most of the current network cost models obsolete, as they estimate the expenditures in a static manner. In this paper, a novel methodology is proposed, in which a value chain in sliced networks is presented. Based on the proposed value chain, the profits generated by different slices are analyzed, and the task of network resource management is modeled as a multiobjective optimization problem. Setting strong assumptions, this optimization problem is analyzed starting from a simple ideal scenario. By removing the assumptions step-by-step, realistic but complex use cases are approached. Through this progressive analysis, technical challenges in slice implementation and network optimization are investigated under different scenarios. For each challenge, some potentially available solutions are suggested, and likely applications are also discussed

Applications of Repeated Games in Wireless Networks: A Survey

A repeated game is an effective tool to model interactions and conflicts for players aiming to achieve their objectives in a long-term basis. Contrary to static noncooperative games that model an interaction among players in only one period, in repeated games, interactions of players repeat for multiple periods; and thus the players become aware of other players' past behaviors and their future benefits, and will adapt their behavior accordingly. In wireless networks, conflicts among wireless nodes can lead to selfish behaviors, resulting in poor network performances and detrimental individual payoffs. In this paper, we survey the applications of repeated games in different wireless networks. The main goal is to demonstrate the use of repeated games to encourage wireless nodes to cooperate, thereby improving network performances and avoiding network disruption due to selfish behaviors. Furthermore, various problems in wireless networks and variations of repeated game models together with the corresponding solutions are discussed in this survey. Finally, we outline some open issues and future research directions.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables, 168 reference

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