Hierarchical Cooperation for Operator-Controlled Device-to-Device Communications: A Layered Coalitional Game Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a layered coalitional game framework for hierarchical D2D communications in LTE-A networks, enabling operators and devices to cooperate for improved utility and throughput.

Contribution

It proposes a novel layered coalitional game approach modeling operator and device cooperation in hierarchical D2D networks, with stability analysis and numerical validation.

Findings

Significant utility and throughput gains over non-cooperative scenarios

Stable coalition structures achieved with the proposed game model

Fast convergence of the layered coalitional game

Abstract

Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, which allow direct communication among mobile devices, have been proposed as an enabler of local services in 3GPP LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) cellular networks. This work investigates a hierarchical LTE-A network framework consisting of multiple D2D operators at the upper layer and a group of devices at the lower layer. We propose a cooperative model that allows the operators to improve their utility in terms of revenue by sharing their devices, and the devices to improve their payoff in terms of end-to-end throughput by collaboratively performing multi-path routing. To help understanding the interaction among operators and devices, we present a game-theoretic framework to model the cooperation behavior, and further, we propose a layered coalitional game (LCG) to address the decision making problems among them. Specifically, the cooperation of operators is modeled as an overlapping coalition formation game (CFG) in a partition form, in which operators should form a stable coalitional structure. Moreover, the cooperation of devices is modeled as a coalitional graphical game (CGG), in which devices establish links among each other to form a stable network structure for multi-path routing.We adopt the extended recursive core, and Nash network, as the stability concept for the proposed CFG and CGG, respectively. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed LCG yields notable gains compared to both the non-cooperative case and a LCG variant and achieves good convergence speed.