Resource Allocation for Uplink NOMA-Based D2D Communication in Energy Harvesting Scenario: A Two-Stage Game Approach

Energy harvesting (EH) endows device-to-device (D2D) communication and cellular equipment with the ability of continuous communication to provide internet-of-things (IoT) services in natural areas. While the available energy, which relies on EH, becomes an extra nonnegligible factor in resource allocation. Besides, we integrate uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with D2D communication to provide multiple access for D2D transmitters for more efficient IoT service and more efficient utilization of limited spectrum. In this scenario, ingenious resource allocation approach is a key focus for utilizing the advantages in energy and spectral efficiency. Aiming to investigate the inherent resource allocation issue, we set our goal as maximizing the energy efficiency for both NOMA-based D2D groups and cellular users (CUs), where the power and spectrum allocation are both considered. Then we propose a two-stage game approach, which is theoretically proved to be capable of obtaining the equilibrium and a stable result, to solve the unilateral energy efficiency maximization problems. Besides, an energy-aware screening method is proposed to reduce the computations based on the available energy of user equipment. Finally, the effectiveness of our proposed method is verified through elaborated simulation results.