Matching Game-Based User Association Approach for LTE-A Mobile Relay Systems

In future wireless networks, the substantial number of users accessing wireless broadband will be vehicular; such as passengers in public transportation vehicles like buses, trains or trams. The number of blocked vehicular users in the network will be high due to the scarcity of the wireless network resources. This becomes even worse when the mobile relay node (MRN) is about to hand-off between LTE base stations, which are known as Evolved Node B (eNBs). Thus, network operators have started investigating how to serve these vehicular users (VUEs) cost-effectively. One of the main promising solutions is to deploy an MRN with multi-back-haul capability, which is also known as distributed relaying with many-to-many connections between eNBs and relays, on a public transportation vehicle that forms a small cell inside the vehicle to serve VUEs with a proper association approach for all users. In this paper, we employ matching game theory for the user association problem in which every node in the network ranks its preferred match based on its utility function. Simulation results show that our proposed approach has improved the admission rate of users and decreased both the blocking and hand-off failure rate.