Two-Level Game Based Spectrum Allocation Scheme for Multi-Flow Carrier Aggregation Technique

Sungwook Kim

doi:10.1109/access.2020.2993891

Abstract

Nowadays, the number of mobile devices have increased rapidly, and require different amounts of spectrum with the limited carrier resource. As an emerging technique, multi-flow carrier aggregation (MCA) has been recently proposed to improve the capacity of 5G heterogeneous network systems. In this paper, we present an effective MCA control scheme for the future heterogeneous network (HetNet). With the MCA-enabled HetNet, we aim at maximizing the system throughput while considering each mobile device's benefit. To strike an appropriate performance balance between network operators and mobile users, our proposed scheme is designed as a two-level game model. The upper and lower level games are developed as different type game models, and work together interactively to reach a fair-efficient spectrum allocation solution. Our hierarchical game approach can achieve reciprocal advantages, and clarifies what is the best solution for the MCA-enabled system. Using extensive simulations, we compare the performance and confirm the superiority of our game-based approach. Finally, the conclusions are presented, and some research challenges are identified for the future study.

Highlights

In recent years, heterogeneous network (HetNet) have been proposed for the 5G wireless communication systems
Our approach can reach a fair-efficient spectrum allocation solution while achieving reciprocal advantages. Compared to these existing Hierarchical game based Cooperative Carrier Aggregation (HCCA), Efficient Multi-stream Carrier Aggregation (EMCA) and Robust Multi-carrier Resource Allocation (RMRA) schemes [1], [2], [10], we demonstrate that our proposed approach attains a better performance during the multi-flow carrier aggregation (MCA) system operations
Ep PCi O, PCl O is denoted by the expected payoff for a player using the PCi O when it encounters a player with the PCl O, and Ep PCi O, PCO is the payoff for a cell operator (CO) using the PCi O when it encounters the rest of other COs whose strategies are distributed in PCO, which can be expressed like as PCj O Ep PCi O, PCj O × ηPCj O the Replicator Dynamics (RD) is defined as [14];

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Heterogeneous network (HetNet) have been proposed for the 5G wireless communication systems. Based on the hierarchical interconnection of upper and lower games, control decisions of different type game players can cause cascade interactions; the COs’ price decisions might affect the behaviors of MDs, and each MD’s resource allocation for the MCA service is the input back to the COs. Based on the online interactive manner, our fine grained two-level game procedure is repeated to reach a fair-efficient solution, and can leverage the full synergy of non-cooperative and cooperative games while solving comprehensively some control issues. To develop the MCA system control scheme, our main issues are i) to decide the CO’s spectrum price, and ii) to allocated the different COs’ spectrum resources for each user’s multiple flows. In each individual MD, traffic flows are game players, and they bargain with each other the COs’ different spectrum resources based on the idea of EMBS. We validate the superiority of our two-level game approach in terms of user’s payoff, MCA system throughput, and fairness among COs

RELATED WORK

PRICE CONTROL MECHANISM FOR MCA SERVICES

THE CONCEPT OF EFFICIENT MAX-MIN BARGAINING

THE PROPOSED MCA SPECTRUM ALLOCATION SCHEME

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS