A stable matching game for joint uplink/downlink resource allocation in OFDMA wireless networks

The emergence of resource-demanding wireless services such as mobile gaming or multimedia applications motivates the introduction of advanced paradigms for resource allocation in next-generation OFDMA-based wireless networks. In this context, while existing literature mainly focused on schemes in which the uplink and downlink resources are considered independently, this paper proposes a novel subcarrier allocation approach suitable for services that have coupled uplink/downlink (UL/DL) quality-of-service requirements. We model the proposed joint uplink/downlink subcarrier allocation problem as a two-sided stable matching game and we propose a corresponding novel resource allocation algorithm. Results show that the proposed stable matching algorithm enables an efficient joint uplink/downlink subcarrier allocation and yields notable performance gains, in terms of the average utility per user, relative to classical resource allocation schemes. The results also show that our approach leads to an improved fairness in the subcarrier allocation.