Resource Management for Device-to-Device Communications in Heterogeneous Networks Using Stackelberg Game

Device-to-device (D2D) communications and femtocell systems can bring significant benefits to users’ throughput. However, the complicated three-tier interference among macrocell, femtocell, and D2D systems is a challenging issue in heterogeneous networks. As D2D user equipment (UE) can cause interference to cellular UE, scheduling and allocation of channel resources and power of D2D communication need elaborate coordination. In this paper, we propose a joint scheduling and resource allocation scheme to improve the performance of D2D communication. We take UE rate and UE fairness into account by performing interference management. First, we construct a Stackelberg game framework in which we group a macrocellular UE, a femtocellular UE, and a D2D UE to form a two-leader one-follower pair. The cellular UE are leaders, and D2D UE is the follower who buys channel resources from the leaders. We analyze the equilibrium of the game and obtain solutions to the equilibrium. Second, we propose an algorithm for joint scheduling of D2D pairs based on their utility. Finally, we perform computer simulations to study the performance of the proposed scheme.