A Nash Stable Cross-Layer Coalitional Game for Resource Utilization in Device-to-Device Communications

In this paper, the problem of distributed mode selection, resource allocation, and interference management is studied for device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaying future cellular networks. In existing underlaid D2D communications, the base station (BS) typically assists D2D pairs in selecting a transmission mode to operate in (network-assisted), that is, either cellular, dedicated, or reuse mode. Network-assisted D2D communications assumes the BS has global knowledge of the network, which includes complete channel state information (CSI). However, acquiring global network information causes signaling overhead and network complexity to increase, due to the large number of users in the network. Therefore, we investigate user-assisted D2D communications as a viable solution for D2D communications, in which the BS has partial knowledge of the network (and partial CSI). To address this problem, a cross-layer coalitional (CLC) game is formulated, where D2D pairs and cellular users are clustered into coalitions based on resource allocation/sharing and mode selection, in a fully distributed and autonomous manner. Clustering D2D pairs allows resources to be shared fairly amongst users in a cluster, while also ensuring D2D pairs operate efficiently. To coordinate the interference between cellular and D2D pairs, an interference management subproblem is proposed that schedules D2D pairs reusing cellular user resources, as well as minimizing the transmission power of all users. To solve this game, a distributed algorithm is proposed, which converges to a Nash stable coalition partition that is socially efficient and has a nonempty core. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can effectively cluster D2D pairs into coalitions based on resource allocation and mode selection, which, in turn, reduces network sum power and increases network sum rate across all D2D pairs.