A Stable Matching Game for User Association in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

In this paper, we proposed a stable matching game theoretic framework that decide to which base station(BS) a giver user should associate in two-tier downlink heterogeneous cellular networks(HCNs). The proposed user association scheme aims to realize the load balancing and simultaneously satisfy the QoS requirements. In order to achieve the objective in downlink heterogeneous cellular network, the problem is formulated as a many-to-one stable matching game in which the users and BSs rank one another based on well-defined utility functions. We show that our proposed scheme can more effectively achieve load balancing, reduce the system total delay, increase rate gains for cell edge users and increase utilization of network resources when satisfy the QoS requirements. Simulation results manifest that the proposed matching algorithm yields significant performance advantages relative to traditional approaches.