An auction mechanism for cell/transmission mode selection in heterogeneous multicast networks

The heterogeneous multicast networks are the networks with several wireless technologies that provide multicast service. Due to the high data rate of the service, point-to-point (P2P) transmission mode, which is employed by unicast channels, is no longer the best mode because of its inefficiency in power consumption and spectrum utilization. Compared with P2P, point-to-multipoint (P2M) transmission mode is recognized as a more promising mode for multicast service. But since P2M mode is provided by mulitcast channels who have turn-on thresholds, the P2M link of a transmission point (TP) is not always available for User Equipments (UEs). To deal with the UEs´ cell/transmission mode selection problem in heterogeneous multicast networks, this paper proposes a novel auction mechanism. In the auction process, TPs act as auctioneers who own channel resource and UEs act as bidders who wish to buy these channels for multicast service. Different from many auction based mechanism, we design two kinds of prices, one for unicast channels providing P2P links and the other for multicast channels providing P2M links. In auction, the equilibrium is defined as the state that no UE wishes to change it decision. Through simulation, we show that the auction process converges to a equilibrium state, and the mechanism achieves about 40%-50% power efficiency compared with that of random access.