Nash bargaining solution based user association optimization in HetNets

In this paper, a fair user association scheme is proposed for heterogeneous networks (HetNets), where the user association optimization is formulated as a Nash bargaining problem. The optimization objective is to maximize the sum of rate related utility, under users' minimal rate constrains, while considering user fairness and load balance between cells in different tiers. Nash bargaining solution and coalition are adopted to solve this optimization problem. Firstly, a two-player bargaining scheme is developed for two base stations (BSs) to bargain user association. Then this two-player scheme is extended to a multi-player bargaining scheme with the aid of Hungarian algorithm that optimally groups BSs into pairs. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively offload users from macrocells, improve user fairness, and also achieve comparable sum rate to the scheme that maximizes the sum rate without considering user fairness.