Energy-efficient Resource Sharing for Device-to-Device Communications Based on Coalition Formation Game

Device-to-Device (D2D) communications gain more and more attention, which can improve the transmit rate and enhance the energy efficiency of the users. However, D2D communications result in new problems and challenges, since the link resource of cellular users is reused and intracell interference can no longer be neglected. In this work, we study the resource sharing scheme about joint mode selection and uplink reusing allocation combining the positive and negative resource sharing willing of the cellular users, from the perspective of reducing the harmful influence of the interference between the cellular users and D2D pairs and enhancing the energy efficiency of the network. More precisely, we analyze the energy efficiency of the users of two modes in D2D communications. Then, we formulate the energy-efficient resource sharing problem as a nontransferable coalition formation game, with the characteristic function of that accounts for the gains in terms of energy efficiency and the costs in terms of mutual interference. Moreover, we develop a distributed coalition formation algorithm based on the merge-and-split rules and the Pareto order, which is used to get the strategy of the uplink resource sharing. Extensive simulation results are provided to demonstrate the validity of our proposed game and model and algorithm.