A Sequential Auction Game for QoS-Aware User Association in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

This paper investigates the user association problem in downlink heterogeneous cellular networks. To better utilize available radio resources and simultaneously maintain user QoS requirements, we propose a user association scheme that aims to strike a tradeoff between load balancing and user QoS constraints. We introduce a sequential second-price auction game that allocates users to base stations in repeated iterations. We propose a valuation function formulation for participating buyers to respect user QoS requirements, and we introduce a game mechanism with unit demand buyers and myopic bidding strategies that encourages traffic offloading. Furthermore, we investigate the ordering of distinct users that provides an approximation to socially efficient outcomes. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme and show significant rate gains for cell edge users.