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 serious gaming approach to managing interference in ad hoc femtocell wireless networks

The aim of this paper is to optimize femtocell performance by managing interference between femtocell devices and between a femtocell and a macrocell. It achieves this using a three-phase approach that involves deployment of femtocells and control of resulting connections through consideration and management of path loss, transmission power, signal strength and coverage area. Simulation experiments of the proposed three-phase approach at a local college that experiences a poor service from the macrocell predict significant improvements in femtocell performance in terms of managing both types of interference: co-tier and cross-tier, number of users who experience good service, coverage, and mitigating outage probability. The overall and individual complexity of each phase has also been considered. Our approach has been compared with some existing techniques chosen from the literature that has been reviewed and its predicted performance is significantly improved in comparison to these

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

Resource Allocation for Cognitive Small Cell Networks: A Cooperative Bargaining Game Theoretic Approach

Cognitive small cell networks have been envisioned as a promising technique for meeting the exponentially increasing mobile traffic demand. Recently, many technological issues pertaining to cognitive small cell networks have been studied, including resource allocation and interference mitigation, but most studies assume non-cooperative schemes or perfect channel state information (CSI). Different from the existing works, we investigate the joint uplink subchannel and power allocation problem in cognitive small cells using cooperative Nash bargaining game theory, where the cross-tier interference mitigation, minimum outage probability requirement, imperfect CSI and fairness in terms of minimum rate requirement are considered. A unified analytical framework is proposed for the optimization problem, where the near optimal cooperative bargaining resource allocation strategy is derived based on Lagrangian dual decomposition by introducing time-sharing variables and recalling the Lambert-W function. The existence, uniqueness, and fairness of the solution to this game model are proved. A cooperative Nash bargaining resource allocation algorithm is developed, and is shown to converge to a Pareto-optimal equilibrium for the cooperative game. Simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed cooperative game algorithm for efficient and fair resource allocation in cognitive small cell networks