Traffic-Aware Multiple Association in Ultradense Networks: A State-Based Potential Game

In the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication system, base stations become denser, and user equipment becomes more powerful. Multiple-association technique promises diversity gains for 5G. However, existing multiple-association schemes are centralized, which have high signal overhead and depend on the reference signal receiving power, and cannot adapt to the fluctuating traffic of users. Therefore, it calls for a new distributed multiple-association scheme. We model the multiple-association problem as a state-based potential game (SPG). With the aid of SPG, the association policy that we designed could drive the ultradense networks to evolve toward the global optimization in the flow level performance. Finally, the performance of our proposed traffic-aware multiple association (TAMA) algorithm is investigated through a practical and discrete simulation method.