Sequentially Distributed Coalition Formation Game for Throughput Maximization in C-RANs

Cloud radio access network (C-RAN) has been proposed as a solution to reducing the huge cost of network upgrade while providing the spectral and energy efficiency needed for the new generation cellular networks. In order to reduce the interference that occur in C-RAN and maximize throughput, this paper proposes a sequentially distributed coalition formation (SDCF) game in which players, in this case the remote radio heads (RRHs), can sequentially join multiple coalitions to maximize their throughput. Contrary to overlapping coalition formation (OCF) game where players contribute fractions of their limited resources to different coalitions, the SDCF game offers better stability by allowing sequential coalition formation depending on the availability of resources and therefore providing a balance between efficient spectrum use and interference management. An algorithm for the proposed model is developed based on the merge-only method. The performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of stability, complexity and convergence to final coalition structure is also investigated. Simulation results show that the proposed SDCF game did not only maximize the throughput in the C-RAN, but it also shows better performances and larger capabilities to manage interference with increasing number of RRHs compared to existing methods

Spectrum Leasing as an Incentive towards Uplink Macrocell and Femtocell Cooperation

The concept of femtocell access points underlaying existing communication infrastructure has recently emerged as a key technology that can significantly improve the coverage and performance of next-generation wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a framework for macrocell-femtocell cooperation under a closed access policy, in which a femtocell user may act as a relay for macrocell users. In return, each cooperative macrocell user grants the femtocell user a fraction of its superframe. We formulate a coalitional game with macrocell and femtocell users being the players, which can take individual and distributed decisions on whether to cooperate or not, while maximizing a utility function that captures the cooperative gains, in terms of throughput and delay.We show that the network can selforganize into a partition composed of disjoint coalitions which constitutes the recursive core of the game representing a key solution concept for coalition formation games in partition form. Simulation results show that the proposed coalition formation algorithm yields significant gains in terms of average rate per macrocell user, reaching up to 239%, relative to the non-cooperative case. Moreover, the proposed approach shows an improvement in terms of femtocell users' rate of up to 21% when compared to the traditional closed access policy.Comment: 29 pages, 11 figures, accepted at the IEEE JSAC on Femtocell Network

コグニティブネットワークとヘテロジニアスネットワークの協調によるスペクトルの効率的利用に関する研究

学位の種別: 課程博士審査委員会委員 : （主査）東京大学教授 瀬崎 薫, 東京大学教授 浅見 徹, 東京大学教授 江崎 浩, 東京大学准教授 川原 圭博, 東京大学教授 森川 博之, 東京大学教授 相田 仁University of Tokyo(東京大学

DISCO:Interference-Aware Distributed Cooperation with Incentive Mechanism for 5G Heterogeneous Ultra-Dense Networks

Interference and traffic imbalance hinder improved system performance in heterogeneous ultra-dense networks. Network cooperation has become a promising paradigm with sophisticated techniques that can significantly enhance performance. In this article, a coalition game-theoretic framework is introduced to characterize cooperative behaviors, thus exploring these cooperative benefits and diversity gains. First, we introduce the basis of the coalition games. Then we survey its latest applications, in particular, interference mitigation and traffic offloading. Different from most current applications, we concentrate on cooperative incentive mechanism design since node cooperation always means resource consumption and other costs. Moreover, for the incentive mechanism, cooperative spectrum leasing is introduced. To mitigate interference and balance traffic, we propose two schemes under the presented framework: IASL and TOSL. Simulation results show the improved performance of the cooperative gains using the proposed IASL and TOSL schemes

Game theoretical models for clustering and resource sharing in macro-femtocells networks

One of the main challenges of cellular network operators is to keep a good network quality for their users. In most cases, network quality decreases in indoor environments causing users to switch from one operator to another. A promising solution to cope with this issue is the deployment of femtocells that are used mainly at homes to enhance the mobile network coverage. In fact, higher penetration of broadband and mobile phones with high requirements of new applications such as video conferencing and internet games are promoting femtocell market. However, the deployment of femtocells in existing macrocell networks is a very challenging task due to the high complexity of the resource allocation. In this thesis, we focus on proposing several solutions to address the resource allocation problem in macro-femtocell networks with dense deployment of femtocells based on clustering techniques. Clustering techniques are used to reduce the resource allocation complexity of dense-femtocell networks since the resources are allocated locally within each cluster. Furthermore, a cluster head is responsible for the allocation of resources to femtocells within the cluster which avoids the co-tier interference. The clustering techniques have been widely used for distributed resource allocation in heterogeneous networks through the use of game theory models. In this work, three distributed resource allocation algorithms based on cooperative and evolutionary games are proposed. In the first part, we discuss the resource allocation problem for the non-dense deployment of femtocells. Toward this goal, a coalitional game is used to incentive femtocells in the formation of clusters. The approach decomposes in: (i) a base station selection algorithm for public users, (ii) a clustering algorithm based on cooperative game theory and (iii) a resource allocation within each cluster based on the PSO technique. Besides, an interference control mechanism enabled femtocells to leave its current cluster when the interference levels are higher than an interference threshold. In the second part, we focus on a fair allocation of resources for macro-femtocell networks. We develop a clustering algorithm based on a cooperative game for non-dense femtocell network. The Shapley value is applied to find the marginal contribution of every femtocell to all the possible groups of femtocells, thus, finding the fair amount of resources to be allocated to each femtocell within a cluster. This solution is only applied for non-dense femtocell deployment due to that the complexity of calculating the Shapley value increases significantly with a large number of femtocells. Stability criteria based on the ε-concept of game theory is utilized to find the set of stable clusters. Finally, the analysis of the resource allocation for dense-femtocell deployment is addressed through an evolutionary game theory (EGT) model. It is assumed that EGT requires bounded rationality from players, this reduces the complexity and allows the dense deployment of femtocells. In addition, we demonstrate that the set of clusters formed with EGT are stable by means of the replicator dynamics. The proposed model also includes system analysis for users with low mobility such as pedestrians and cyclists

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

Improving Frequency Reuse and Cochannel Interference Coordination in 4G HetNets

This report describes my M.A.Sc. thesis research work. The emerging 4th generation (4G) mobile systems and networks (so called 4G HetNets) are designed as multilayered cellular topology with a number of asymmetrically located, asymmetrically powered, self-organizing, and user-operated indoor small cell (e.g., pico/femto cells and WLANs) with a variety of cell architectures that are overlaid by a large cell (macro cell) with some or all interfering wireless links. These designs of 4G HetNets bring new challenges such as increased dynamics of user mobility and data traffic trespassing over the multi-layered cell boundaries. Traditional approaches of radio resource allocation and inter-cell (cochannel) interference management that are mostly centralized and static in the network core and are carried out pre-hand by the operator in 3G and lower cellular technologies, are liable to increased signaling overhead, latencies, complexities, and scalability issues and, thus, are not viable in case of 4G HetNets. In this thesis a comprehensive research study is carried out on improving the radio resource sharing and inter-cell interference management in 4G HetNets. The solution strategy exploits dynamic and adaptive channel allocation approaches such as dynamic and opportunistic spectrum access (DSA, OSA) techniques, through exploiting the spatiotemporal diversities among transmissions in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based medium access in 4G HetNets. In this regards, a novel framework named as Hybrid Radio Resource Sharing (HRRS) is introduced. HRRS comprises of these two functional modules: Cognitive Radio Resource Sharing (CRRS) and Proactive Link Adaptation (PLA) scheme. A dynamic switching algorithm enables CRRS and PLA modules to adaptively invoke according to whether orthogonal channelization is to be carried out exploiting the interweave channel allocation (ICA) approach or non-orthogonal channelization is to be carried out exploiting the underlay channel allocation (UCA) approach respectively when relevant conditions regarding the traffic demand and radio resource availability are met. Benefits of CRRS scheme are identified through simulative analysis in comparison to the legacy cochannel and dedicated channel deployments of femto cells respectively. The case study and numerical analysis for PLA scheme is carried out to understand the dynamics of threshold interference ranges as function of transmit powers of MBS and FBS, relative ranges of radio entities, and QoS requirement of services with the value realization of PLA scheme.1 yea

The co-existence of Femtocell with WiFi (in case of unlicensed spectrum splitting & sharing)

Les femtocellules et le WiFi sont souvent présentés comme étant deux technologies concurrentes. Cependant, la réalité dit totalement l'inverse; ces technologies sont supposées jouer des rôles complémentaires dans le but d'accompagner la croissance fulgurante du trafic mobile. De plus, elles sont souvent implémentées dans un même et unique équipement d'accès. Les équipements mobiles pourront ainsi choisir l'utilisation de la technologie qui représente la meilleure option. Le déploiement des femtocellules dans les hotspots WiFi permettra aux opérateurs de donner aux usagers la possibilité d'utiliser les technologies 3G. Par conséquent, grâce à ces deux technologies, la qualité de l'expérience de la communication pendant la mobilité sera sans doute meilleure. Toutefois, cette coexistence présente de nouveaux défis en vue de l'amélioration de performances en termes des débits de transmission et de qualité de service des usagers. Ainsi, nous croyons qu'un partitionnement efficace des ressources spectrales accompagné d'un réglage minutieux des paramètres de transmission permettra de maximiser les performances des deux technologies. Dans ce mémoire, nous nous intéressons à la coexistence des technologies femtocellule et WiFi : (i) Dans un premier lieu, nous proposons une technique de partage des bandes spectrales ouvertes entre le réseau WiFi et le réseau femtocellule. La technique proposée assure une qualité de service et une équité entre les transmissions concurrentes. En se basant sur plusieurs simulations, nous démontrons que la technique proposée assure un partage équitable du spectre. (ii) Dans un second lieu, nous proposons un Framework ayant pour objectif l'amélioration du débit total du réseau des femtocellules lorsque ces dernières utilisent simultanément des bandes de spectres ouvertes et d'autres sous licences. Le système étudié, comprenant le réseau WiFi et le réseau des femtocellules, a été modélisé analytiquement et ses performances ont été évaluées par plusieurs simulations. Ces dernières ont permis de quantifier l'effet de plusieurs paramètres de la technologie WiFi sur les performances du système étudié.\ud ______________________________________________________________________________ \ud MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Femtocellule, WiFi, allocation de spectre, qualité de service, équité, capacité, spectre sans licence, modèle de back-off