Efficiency Intra-Cluster Device-to-Device Relay Selection for Multicast Services Based on Combinatorial Auction

In Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) networks, Device-to-device (D2D) communications can be utilized to enhance the performance of multicast services by leveraging D2D relays to serve nodes with worse channel conditions within a cluster. For traditional D2D relay schemes, D2D links with poor channel condition may be the bottleneck of system sum data rate. In this paper, to optimize the throughput of D2D communications, we introduce an iterative combinatorial auction algorithm for efficient D2D relay selection. In combinatorial auctions, the User Equipments (UEs) that fails to correctly receive multicast data from eNodeB (eNB) are viewed as bidders that compete for D2D relays, while the eNB is treated as the auctioneer. We also give properties of convergency and low-complexity and present numerical simulations to verify the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.