Overlapping Coalition Formation Games for Joint Interference Management and Resource Allocation in D2D Communications

In this paper, an overlapping coalition formation game is proposed to conduct joint interference management and resource allocation in device-to-device (D2D) communications. We aim at improving the sum rate of all D2D links in D2D communications underlying cellular network without sacrificing the quality of service of each cellular user (CU) and D2D link. First, based on the cross-tier interference level between CUs and D2D links, each D2D link selects multiple best resource blocks (RBs) to reuse. Then, by dividing the user equipments (i.e., CU and D2D links) which share the same RB into one coalition, an initial overlapping coalitional structure is formed. A cooperative game with overlapping coalitions is further proposed to maximize the system utility in terms of sum rate of all D2D links. Finally, the characteristic analysis of the proposed algorithm is provided to validate that the user equipments can cooperate to form a stable and most beneficial coalitional structure with overlapping coalitions. Simulation results show that the proposed overlapping coalition formation game achieves a better performance compared with other existing schemes.