In this paper, a novel social network-aware user association in wirelesssmall cell networks with underlaid device-to-device (D2D) communication isinvestigated. The proposed approach exploits social strategic relationshipsbetween user equipments (UEs) and their physical proximity to optimize theoverall network performance. This problem is formulated as a matching gamebetween UEs and their serving nodes (SNs) in which, an SN can be a small cellbase station (SCBS) or an important UE with D2D capabilities. The problem iscast as a many-to-one matching game in which UEs and SNs rank one another usingpreference relations that capture both the wireless aspects (i.e., receivedsignal strength, traffic load, etc.) and users' social ties (e.g., UE proximityand social distance). Due to the combinatorial nature of the network-wide UE-SNmatching, the problem is decomposed into a dynamic clustering problem in whichSCBSs are grouped into disjoint clusters based on mutual interference.Subsequently, an UE-SN matching game is carried out per cluster. The game underconsideration is shown to belong to a class of matching games withexternalities arising from interference and peer effects due to users socialdistance, enabling UEs and SNs to interact with one another until reaching astable matching. Simulation results show that the proposed social-aware userassociation approach yields significant performance gains, reaching up to 26%,24%, and 31% for 5-th, 50-th and 95-th percentiles for UE throughputs,respectively, as compared to the classical social-unaware baseline.
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