Energy-Efficient Optimal Relay Selection in Cooperative Cellular Networks Based on Double Auction

Both capacity and energy efficiency are crucial for next-generation wireless networks. This paper investigates energy efficiency in cooperative cellular networks. Based on the double auction theory, we model the optimal relay assignment problem, which aims at improving the performance of cell-edge users (CEUs) with energy efficiency optimization. In the proposed auction-based model, the selfish nature of users is taken into consideration, which means users in the idle state are unwilling to relay the information for active CEUs unless they are paid enough. Therefore, we use mark-up to determine the bid and ask. Furthermore, the energy efficiency (EE) is defined and the model for optimizing the EE is built. An energy-efficient maximum weighted matching algorithm (EE-MWM) is proposed to solve the EE optimization problem. Finally, the performance of EE-MWM is evaluated in terms of EE, capacity and social welfare, which shows that EE-MWM can greatly improve the performance of cooperative cellular networks.