Selfishness in device-to-device communication underlaying cellular networks

In a device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular network, user equipments are required to operate cooperatively and unselfishly to transmit data as relays. However, most users behave in a more or less selfish way, which makes user selfishness a key factor that affects the performance of the whole communication system. We focus on the impact of node selfishness on D2D communications. By separating the user selfishness into two types in accordance with two D2D transmission modes - connected D2D transmission and opportunistic D2D transmission, we propose a time-varying graph model that characterizes the impacts of both individual and social selfishness on D2D communications. Simulation results obtained under the realistic networking settings indicate that the interaction between connected and opportunistic selfishness worsens the impairment caused by individual selfishness, while the harmful interaction caused by social selfishness can be alleviated.