Two-Stage Stable Matching Based Dynamic Spectrum Allocation in Heterogeneous Networks

This paper addresses the resource allocation problem for small cells in the two-tier heterogeneous networks (HetNets) with non-independent resource blocks (RBs) usability, which is prevalent in HetNets application. To formulate the correlations of different RBs to facilitate the resource allocation, a normalized pointwise mutual information (NPMI)-based coefficient is proposed, which is easy to compute and adapt based on the historical information about RBs usability. To obtain a fast allocation solution, a two-stage stable matching-based dynamic spectrum allocation algorithm (TSSM) is proposed, which takes both network throughput and user performance as optimization metrics. Specifically, through robust preferable stable matching in the first stage and the iterative matchings with NPMI-based coefficient as the preference profiles in the second stage, the efficient matching solution can be obtained with low complexity and thus is well adapted to the requirement of the resource allocation in HetNets. The validity of the proposed coefficient in modeling the relevance of RBs usability and the benefit of its usage in the allocation algorithm is verified with typical spectrum usability related data. The extensive simulation results on various spectrum environment show the average probability of no RB to use following the proposed TSSM are reduced by more than 13.2%, and the robust requirement for users can be guaranteed better at the same time. Furthermore, the accumulated throughput of all users in the network increases by more than 19.4% on an average under different RBs usability environment.