Scalable and fair resource sharing among 5G D2D users and legacy 4G users: A game theoretic approach

We propose a game theoretic approach to the problem of resource allocation in fifth generation device to device communications underlying cellular networks, where modern fifth generation device to device users share channel resources of legacy fourth generation cellular users. Though such sharing improves scalability as more and more users can be served, the individual throughput obtained by a cellular user may get reduced when its channel resource is shared by a device to device user pair. Thus our aim is to increase the overall system throughput while ensuring effective user fairness for the legacy cellular users served. Our approach provides a tradeoff between the two objectives thereby ensuring no legacy cellular users are compromised heavily while encouraging modern device to device users. We have addressed this fairness problem by thresholding the reduction of the throughput of a cellular user with respect to its ideal throughput if not reused. We have proposed a game theoretic model in order to make strategic decision for selecting the preferred action configuration in order to meet this objective. We have also discussed about the convergence and the time bound of the proposed game model with a clear analysis of the scenarios encountered during the process of shared consumption of resources among cellular users and the device to device users. Together with this game model, convergence and time bound analyses and two validation processes, we aim to improve scalability, overall system throughput without compromising the fairness of the cellular users. We have also compared the user fairness achieved by our approach with two existing approaches to demonstrate the effectiveness of our game theoretic approach.