A Game-Theoretic Framework for Interference Coordination in OFDMA Relay Networks

Interference coordination, or interference-aware resource allocation, plays a key role in increasing resource utilization and improving cell throughput in orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) relay networks. In this paper, we develop a game-theoretic framework called the interference coordination game (ICG) to address this problem. To obtain the equilibrium of ICG and reduce the computational complexity, we decompose ICG into two subgames called the resource block assignment game (RBAG) and the power allocation game (PAG). The objective of the RBAG is to allocate resource block (RB) while avoiding interference. Based on RB assignment, we use the PAG to further reduce interferences and improve system payoff. As a higher system payoff can be accomplished by improving the individual players´ payoff, each player can choose a best response to the others´ action to implement system resource allocation while avoiding solving a complicated optimization problem. We theoretically prove the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium of ICG and conduct simulation experiments based on the model with realistic broadband channel propagation conditions to verify the analytical results and validate the effectiveness of ICG. In addition, numerical results show that our proposed interference coordination framework can guarantee that ICG converges to equilibrium and achieves better performance in terms of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) distribution and system throughput compared with fractional frequency reuse scheme and schemes without interference coordination.