Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, which allow direct communication amongmobile devices, have been proposed as an enabler of local services in 3GPPLTE-Advanced (LTE-A) cellular networks. This work investigates a hierarchicalLTE-A network framework consisting of multiple D2D operators at the upper layerand a group of devices at the lower layer. We propose a cooperative model thatallows the operators to improve their utility in terms of revenue by sharingtheir devices, and the devices to improve their payoff in terms of end-to-endthroughput by collaboratively performing multi-path routing. To helpunderstanding the interaction among operators and devices, we present agame-theoretic framework to model the cooperation behavior, and further, wepropose a layered coalitional game (LCG) to address the decision makingproblems among them. Specifically, the cooperation of operators is modeled asan overlapping coalition formation game (CFG) in a partition form, in whichoperators should form a stable coalitional structure. Moreover, the cooperationof devices is modeled as a coalitional graphical game (CGG), in which devicesestablish links among each other to form a stable network structure formulti-path routing.We adopt the extended recursive core, and Nash network, asthe stability concept for the proposed CFG and CGG, respectively. Numericalresults demonstrate that the proposed LCG yields notable gains compared to boththe non-cooperative case and a LCG variant and achieves good convergence speed.
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