Load balancing is an effective approach to address the spatial-temporal fluctuation problem of mobile data traffic for cellular networks. The existing schemes that focus on channel borrowing from ...neighboring cells cannot be directly applied to the future 5G wireless networks, because the neighboring cells will reuse the same spectrum band in 5G systems. In this paper, we consider an orthogonal frequency division multiple access ultra-dense small cell network, where device-to-device (D2D) communication is advocated to facilitate load balancing without extra spectrum. Specifically, the data traffic can be effectively offloaded from a congested small cell to other underutilized small cells by D2D communications. The problem is naturally formulated as a joint resource allocation and D2D routing problem that maximizes the system sum-rate. To efficiently solve the problem, we decouple the problem into a resource allocation subproblem and a D2D routing subproblem. The two subproblems are solved iteratively as a monotonic optimization problem and a complementary geometric programming problem, respectively. Simulation results show that the data sum-rate in the neighboring small cells increases 20% on average by offloading the data traffic in the congested small cell to the neighboring small cell base stations.
In this paper, we study the resource allocation problem for a single-cell non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) relay network where an OFDM amplify-and-forward relay allocates the spectrum and power ...resources to the source-destination (SD) pairs. We aim to optimize the resource allocation to maximize the average sum-rate. The optimal approach requires an exhaustive search, leading to an NP-hard problem. To solve this problem, we propose two efficient many-to-many two-sided SD pair-subchannel matching algorithms, in which the SD pairs and sub-channels are considered as two sets of players chasing their own interests. The proposed algorithms can provide a sub-optimal solution to this resource allocation problem in affordable time. Both the static matching algorithm and the dynamic matching algorithm converge to a pair-wise stable matching after a limited number of iterations. Simulation results show that the capacity of both proposed algorithms in the NOMA scheme significantly outperforms the conventional orthogonal multiple access scheme. The proposed matching algorithms in NOMA scheme also achieve a better user-fairness performance than the conventional orthogonal multiple access.
The future sixth generation (6G) wireless communications look forward to constructing a ubiquitous intelligent information network with high data rates. To fulfill such challenging visions, the ...reconfigurable holographic surface (RHS) is developed as a promising solution due to its capability of accurate multi-beam steering with low power consumption and hardware cost. Different from the conventional phase-controlled antennas, the RHS can control the radiation amplitude of the reference wave propagating on the metasurface by leveraging the holographic technique. The desired object waves can then be generated without complex phase-shifting circuits, enabling the convenient implementation of the transceiver. Such amplitude-controlled holographic beamforming triggers new challenges since a new beamforming scheme needs to be developed to handle the complex-domain optimization problem subject to the unconventional real-domain amplitude constraints, which makes the superposition of the radiation waves from different antenna elements difficult to tackle. In this letter, we consider an RHS-aided multi-user communication system with a base station equipped with an RHS. We formulate a sum rate maximization problem and design a novel amplitude-controlled algorithm to solve the problem. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
The prevalence of high performance mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets has brought fundamental changes to existing wireless networks. The growth of multimedia and location-based mobile ...services has exponentially increased network congestion and the demands for more wireless access. This has led to the development of advanced techniques to address the resulting challenges based on the concept of cooperation in various heterogeneous network scenarios. Thus, innovative incentive mechanisms in wireless networks are needed to ensure the participation of third party nodes, such as access points, small cells, and users. In this tutorial, we demonstrate the effectiveness of contract theory to design incentive mechanisms for a wide range of application scenarios in wireless networks. In contract theory, participants are offered properly designed rewards based on their performances to encourage better participation. First, we present an overview of basic concepts and models of contract theory, with comparisons to other related methods from economics. We then discuss incentive mechanisms, with a focus on the design of rewards in a contract. We demonstrate how contract theory can be utilized for developing effective incentive mechanisms for emerging wireless network scenarios such as traffic offloading, mobile crowdsourcing, and spectrum trading.
In this paper, we study the problem of cooperative interference management in an OFDMA two-tier small cell network. In particular, we propose a novel approach for allowing the small cells to ...cooperate, so as to optimize their sum-rate, while cooperatively satisfying their maximum transmit power constraints. Unlike existing work which assumes that only disjoint groups of cooperative small cells can emerge, we formulate the small cells' cooperation problem as a coalition formation game with overlapping coalitions. In this game, each small cell base station can choose to participate in one or more cooperative groups (or coalitions) simultaneously, so as to optimize the tradeoff between the benefits and costs associated with cooperation. We study the properties of the proposed overlapping coalition formation game and we show that it exhibits negative externalities due to interference. Then, we propose a novel decentralized algorithm that allows the small cell base stations to interact and self-organize into a stable overlapping coalitional structure. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm results in a notable performance advantage in terms of the total system sum-rate, relative to the noncooperative case and the classical algorithms for coalitional games with non-overlapping coalitions.
Recently, cellular networks have become severely overloaded by social-based services, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, in which thousands of clients subscribe to a common content provider ...(e.g., a popular singer) and download his/her content updates all the time. Offloading such traffic through complementary networks, such as a delay tolerant network formed by device-to-device (D2D) communications between mobile subscribers, is a promising solution to reduce the cellular burdens. In the existing solutions, mobile users are assumed to be volunteers who selflessly deliver the content to every other user in proximity while moving. However, practical users are selfish and they will evaluate their individual payoffs in the D2D sharing process, which may highly influence the network performance compared to the case of selfless users. In this paper, we take user selfishness into consideration and propose a network formation game to capture the dynamic characteristics of selfish behaviors. In the proposed game, we provide the utility function of each user and specify the conditions under which the subscribers are guaranteed to converge to a stable network. Then, we propose a practical network formation algorithm in which the users can decide their D2D sharing strategies based on their historical records. Simulation results show that user selfishness can highly degrade the efficiency of data offloading, compared with ideal volunteer users. Also, the decrease caused by user selfishness can be highly affected by the cost ratio between the cellular transmission and D2D transmission, the access delays, and mobility patterns.
Non-orthogonal multiple access techniques have been proposed recently for 5G wireless systems and beyond to improve access efficiency by allowing many users to share the same spectrum. Due to the ...strong co-channel interference among mobile users introduced by NOMA, it poses significant challenges for system design and resource management. This article reviews resource management issues in NOMA systems. The main taxonomy of NOMA is presented by focusing on the two main categories of resource reuse: power-domain and code-domain NOMA. Then a novel radio resource management framework is proposed based on game-theoretic models for uplink and downlink transmissions. Finally, potential applications and open research directions in the area of resource management for NOMA are provided.
Driven by both safety concerns and commercial interests, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have recently received considerable attentions. In this paper, we address popular content distribution ...(PCD) in VANETs, in which one large popular file is downloaded from a stationary roadside unit (RSU), by a group of on-board units (OBUs) driving through an area of interest (AoI) along a highway. Due to high speeds of vehicles and deep fadings of vehicle-to-roadside (V2R) channels, some of the vehicles may not finish downloading the entire file but only possess several pieces of it. To successfully send a full copy to each OBU, we propose a cooperative approach based on coalition formation games, in which OBUs exchange their possessed pieces by broadcasting to and receiving from their neighbors. Simulation results show that our proposed approach presents a considerable performance improvement relative to the non-cooperative approach, in which the OBUs broadcast randomly selected pieces to their neighbors as along as the spectrum is detected to be unoccupied.
Device-to-device (D2D) communication is seen as a major technology to overcome the imminent wireless capacity crunch and to enable new application services. In this paper, a novel social-aware ...approach for optimizing D2D communication by exploiting two layers, namely the social network layer and the physical wireless network layer, is proposed. In particular, the physical layer D2D network is captured via the users' encounter histories. Subsequently, an approach, based on the so-called Indian Buffet Process, is proposed to model the distribution of contents in the users' online social networks. Given the social relations collected by the base station, a new algorithm for optimizing the traffic offloading process in D2D communications is developed. In addition, the Chernoff bound and approximated cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the offloaded traffic are derived and the validity of the bound and cdf is proven. Simulation results based on real traces demonstrate the effectiveness of our model and show that the proposed approach can offload the network's traffic successfully.
In this paper, we consider a cooperative autonomous driving system where a vehicle overtakes the one in front based on collective perception. To avoid collisions with vehicles on the other lane, we ...propose a V2X-based cooperative collision avoidance scheme. The overtaking vehicle estimates the distance between itself and the neighbors via V2V communications and decides whether to overtake or not. Two cases where the distance information is obtained independently and cooperatively are taken into account. We derive the probability of collision avoidance and analyze the influence of different factors such as speed and density of vehicles on the system performance. Simulation results verify our analysis and show that our V2X-based cooperative collision avoidance scheme performs better than traditional GNSS-based collision avoidance scheme. The performance gain brought by the cooperative case compared to the independent case in our scheme can also be observed.