On channel selection for energy-constrained rateless-coded D2D communications

We consider a distributed channel selection problem for device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaying conventional cellular networks. In our model, underlaying devices exploit the possibly-idle licensed cellular spectrum in order to establish direct communications links, and transmit using rateless coding under energy constraint. While the quality of each channel is assumed to be stochastic, the availability is non-stochastic (adversarial). Moreover, cellular channels are idle only for some finite time. As acquiring prior information about channel quality and/or availability yields excessive cost, we assume that D2D devices do not possess any prior information about channels. Device pairs face the problem of selecting a suitable channel so that a successful data delivery under the energy constraint is guaranteed. We model this problem as a multi-armed bandit game with mortal arms, and provide an algorithmic solution.