Distributed bargaining strategy for downlink virtual MIMO with device-to-Device communication

This letter considers the downlink of a cellular network with an asymmetric antenna configuration, where virtual multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is formed with receive cooperation over out-of-band or in-band overlay device-to-device (D2D) links. The objective of this work is to determine the best pairing and resource sharing configuration of the cooperative devices such that the overall network utility is optimized and the devices achieve their best available rate larger than that without D2D cooperation. A distributed algorithm is developed via an algorithmic-game-theoretic message-passing framework to obtain a solution at a low computational cost and without reporting the D2D link qualities to the base station. We show that the algorithm converges to an optimal point through analysis and its performance is validated by simulation. In addition, the virtual MIMO network enabled by the D2D receive cooperation is shown to provide a significant gain over the network without the D2D receive cooperation.