A Two-layered Incentive Scheme for Cooperation in Sliced 5G D2D Networks

In the fifth generation (5G) networks, isolated logical slices are formed by the same infrastructure, and spectrum resource. In the coverage regions of the sharing access points (APs), device to device (D2D) communication can occur among different slices, i.e., one mobile terminal (MT) acts as a D2D relay for another MT serving by a different slice. Since the slices, and the MTs are selfish who will not help others voluntarily, this paper proposes a two-layered incentive scheme to stimulate cooperation. To achieve this, two resource allocating problems of the proposed incentive scheme are formulated which introducing the slices,’ and the MTs’ cooperative activities, thus more resources will be allocated to the cooperative slices, and MTs as reward. Since the slices,’ and the MTs’ instantaneous resource allocations can not be obtained by the two optimal problems, the incentive scheduling algorithms of the slices, and the MTs are designed. Finally, we define the isolation indexes to evaluate slice isolation when carrying out cooperation. By simulating, it is proved that the proposed incentive scheme can stimulate cooperation efficiently, since the throughputs of the cooperative slices, and MTs are both improved. And the proposed incentive scheme is helpful for the slices, and the MTs to meet the statistical service quality requirements, and brings the bad effect to the instantaneous service quality requirements.