Contract Design for Traffic Offloading and Resource Allocation in Heterogeneous Ultra-Dense Networks

Abstract

Abstract-In heterogeneous ultra-dense networks (HetUDNs), the software-defined wireless network (SDWN) separates resource management from the geo-distributed resources belonging to different service providers. Through a centralized SDWN controller, the operation of the entire network can be managed in a global manner. In this work, we focus on mobile traffic offloading and resource allocation in the SDWN-based HetUDNs, which is constituted of heterogeneous macro base stations (MBSs) and small-cell base stations (SBSs). We explore a scenario where the capacity of the SBSs is accessible, but their expected performance for offloading cannot be known to the SDWN controller, which is the information asymmetric case. To address this asymmetry, a bundle of incentive traffic offloading contracts is designed, to encourage each SBS to select the contract specifically designed to achieve its own maximum net utility. Meanwhile, the MBS utility and social welfare can also be optimized, in comparison to the situation without information asymmetry. To aggregate the characteristics of large numbers of SBSs in HetUDNs, we develop an analytical model that characterizes the SBS type based on different contracts which can be designed with individual rationality and incentive compatibility. This leads to an analytical expression in closed-form for SBS type which we validate mathematically and by simulations, and observe that the monotonicity and incentive compatibility of contracts are ensured. The effectiveness and efficiency of the contract-based traffic offloading mechanism that we design, and the overall system performance are also validated with simulation results.

Joint User Association and Resource Allocation in the Uplink of Heterogeneous Networks

“…where L(x, s, p, µ 1 , µ 2 ) is the abstract Lagrangian duality associated to (6), and is defined as…”

“…Furthermore, a plethora of research studies considered user association (UA), sub-channel and power allocation problems in downlink heterogeneous networks (HetNets) [3]- [6]. In [3], joint resource allocation and UA was solved for downlink HetNets to maximize the weighted sumrate.…”

“…This problem was iteratively solved by relaxing the integer variable and Lagrangian dual decomposition. The authors in [6] proposed a contract-based traffic offloading and resource allocation mechanism for the softwaredefined ultra-dense heterogeneous wireless networks.…”

Orchestration and Control in Software‐Defined 5G Networks: Research Challenges

“…The idea is to offload traffic by caching contents in the edge (i.e., radio access) of the network, such as the different base stations, the relays, and potentially even in the enduser devices. Traffic offloading will enable facing the increase of traffic demand and achieve better Quality of Experience (QoE) [92].…”

Traffic Offloading in 5G Heterogeneous Networks using Rank based Network Selection

“…Though, Software-Defined network could be one of the approaches used as intelligent network configuration for data offloading and as it is also configured by the central controller according to architectural need. Offloading mechanism is usually introduced to the communication model while keeping in view of both the user's perspective of cost minimization and of cellular network operator's perspective of optimal usage of resources, meanwhile effectively fulfilling the user data rate demands in compliance with next-generation wireless technologies [27]. For both the cases, the offloading decision process is crucial without loss of significant quality of user experience and offloading efficiency depends upon offloading problem formation and finding optimal solutions.…”