Distributed data aggregation in machine-to-machine communication networks based on coalitional game

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications have emerged as a flourishing technology for next-generation communications, and are undergoing rapid development while inspiring numerous applications. However, unique features of M2M communications, such as the massive number of machine type devices (MTD) and delay sensitive applications require specific considerations. To enhance the communication efficiency with delay sensitive short messages, a key strategy is to utilize data aggregation. To facilitate an efficient distributed data aggregation among MTDs with different urgency levels, we propose a game theoretic mechanism based on the coalitional game. Through the proposed algorithm, MTDs autonomously collaborate and self-organize into disjoint independent and stable coalitions, and send their data through a coalition head known as the aggregator. Within each coalition, the utility of the users is defined in such a way that maximum cooperation is compelled. Finally, we discuss the stability of the resulting network structure, and analyse the performance of the proposed scheme.