Dynamic Path To Stability in LTE-Unlicensed With User Mobility: A Matching Framework

LTE-Unlicensed has recently captured intense attention from both academic and industrial fields. By integrating the unlicensed spectrum with the licensed spectrum, using carrier aggregation, LTE-Unlicensed users can experience enhanced transmission while maintaining the seamless mobility management and predictable performance. However, due to different transmission regulations, the coordination between LTE and Wi-Fi systems requires careful design. It is especially important to understand how to guarantee the transmission quality for LTE users and reduce Wi-Fi users' performance degradation, under the impact of the co-channel interference. In other words, how can we solve the unlicensed resource allocation problem under both LTE and Wi-Fi transmission requirements? In this paper, we propose a matching theory framework to tackle this problem. Specifically, the coexistence between LTE and Wi-Fi systems, i.e., the interaction between LTE and Wi-Fi users, is modeled as a stable marriage game. The coexistence constraints are interpreted as the preference lists. Two semi-distributed solutions, namely, the Gale-Shapley and the random path to stability algorithms are proposed. In addition, to address the external effect in matching, the inter-channel cooperation algorithm is introduced. Last but not least, the resource allocation problem is studied with network dynamics and the proposed mechanisms are evaluated under two typical user mobility models.U.S. National Science Foundation [CNS-1702850, CNS-1646607, ECCS-1547201, CCF-1456921, CMMI-1434789, CNS-1443917, ECCS-1405121, CNS-1343361, CNS-1350230]SCI(E)ARTICLE74547-45611