Resource Block Allocation with Carrier-Aggregation: A Strategy-Proof Auction Design

Carrier aggregation is introduced in LTE-Advanced to aggregate multiple bands of spectrum into a virtual carrier. User equipment (UE) with carrier aggregation capability can increase peak data rates by transmitting through an aggregated virtual carrier that provides greater transmission bandwidth. Nevertheless, further study is needed to determine how carrier aggregation should best be implemented and configured to effectively address the range of UE carrier quality and their heterogeneous quality of service (QoS) requirements. In addition, most existing resource allocation methods rely on the assumption that UE always reports information truthfully, which may be unrealistic when UEs act rationally from a game-theory perspective. To address these concerns, we provide a strategy-proof auction approach to carrier aggregation design in an LTE-Advanced system. We first formulate the resource allocation problem in carrier aggregation as a non-linear optimization problem, which is proved to be NP-hard. We then propose a strategy-proof auction with a greedy resource allocation algorithm to 1) find an efficient carrier activation and resource allocation solution under the QoS requirements of UEs, and 2) guarantee that all rational UEs truthfully report their QoS requirements. Finally, we conduct extensive simulations to evaluate system performance for the proposed auction design.