Resource allocation in self-sustainable green wireless networks with combinatorial auction

A green-energy-powered, self-sustainable cellular network is studied in this paper. To address the problem of the energy variability in the green sources, a joint energy-traffic management mechanism is proposed based on game theory. The interaction between the cellular network and a microgrid power controller is modeled as a two-level Stackelberg game. On the network level, an iterative combinatorial auction mechanism is proposed to solve the joint power-subcarrier allocation problem. On the microgrid level, an adaptive pricing mechanism is adopted for the power controller to balance between the transmission demand and the energy supply. Simulation results show that the proposed resource allocation mechanism achieves a significant improvement in the network sustainability and throughput when compared with the conventional resource allocation method.