Game-theoretic hierarchical resource allocation in ultra-dense networks

Ultra-dense networks (UDN) can increase the network coverage and improve the overall throughput which make it a promising network technology. However, traditional resource allocation algorithms are concerned with the improvement of the overall performance of the network. This paper considers the quality of service (QoS) and energy consumption of each femtocell and proposes a game-theoretic hierarchical resource allocation algorithm in UDN. Firstly, a modified clustering algorithm is performed. Then we transform this resource allocation problem to a two-stage Stackelberg game. In sub-channel resource allocation, we aim to maximize the throughput of the whole system by cluster heads (CHs). The power allocation takes account of the balance between QoS requirement and transmit power consumption. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can obtain a performance improvement compared with other algorithms.