Matching Theory for Over-the-Top Service Provision in 5G Networks

Abstract

Modern over-the-top (OTT) applications can be accessed via Internet connections over cellular networks, possibly shared and managed by multiple mobile network operators (MNOs). The OTT service providers (OSPs) need to interact with MNOs, requesting resources for serving users of different categories and with different quality-of-service requirements. For this purpose, OSPs need OTT application flow prioritization in resource allocation, while the network resource scheduling should respect network neutrality that forbids OSP prioritization. OSPs also need to request resources periodically, according to their performance goals, i.e., grade-of-service (GoS) level (blocking probability), causing delay in flows’ accommodation due to: 1) the time required for information exchange between OSPs and MNOs, affected by network congestion, and 2) the time required for flows to receive resources, affected by the number of concurrently active flows. Acknowledging the lack of OSP-oriented resource management approaches, we: 1) introduce a novel matching theoretic flow prioritization (MTFP) algorithm that respects network neutrality and 2) design analytical models that enable the thorough investigation of the GoS and delay performance in various scenarios. Our results (analytical and simulation) show that MTFP improves both metrics compared to the best effort approach, whereas its performance is affected by the number of flows and the resource allocation frequency.