Two-Level Game Based Spectrum Allocation Scheme for Multi-Flow Carrier Aggregation Technique

Nowadays, the number of mobile devices have increased rapidly, and require different amounts of spectrum with the limited carrier resource. As an emerging technique, multi-flow carrier aggregation (MCA) has been recently proposed to improve the capacity of 5G heterogeneous network systems. In this paper, we present an effective MCA control scheme for the future heterogeneous network (HetNet). With the MCA-enabled HetNet, we aim at maximizing the system throughput while considering each mobile device's benefit. To strike an appropriate performance balance between network operators and mobile users, our proposed scheme is designed as a two-level game model. The upper and lower level games are developed as different type game models, and work together interactively to reach a fair-efficient spectrum allocation solution. Our hierarchical game approach can achieve reciprocal advantages, and clarifies what is the best solution for the MCA-enabled system. Using extensive simulations, we compare the performance and confirm the superiority of our game-based approach. Finally, the conclusions are presented, and some research challenges are identified for the future study.